Source: Courtesy of Warner Bros.
The cast of THE HANGOVER PART II - Bradley Cooper (Phil), Ed Helms (Stu), Zach Galifianakis (Alan), and Ken Jeong (Mr. Chow) talk more about their film, now available on home video on Blu-Ray and DVD!
Q1: How did the sequel idea begin?
Bradley Cooper: Warner Bros. wanted to make another movie, and (director) Todd Phillips had an idea for what it would be. Then we all jumped on and thought about what a possibility could be for a second one.
Ed Helms: There was more story to tell at the end of the day. There was just more adventure for these guys to go on, and that's really what motivated us to get onboard.
(Read InCinemas Review of The Hangover Part II - by Yun-Huei)
Q2: How important was it to raise the stakes and add more humour and more danger?
Bradley Cooper: Essential.
Ed Helms: It's critical. Why bother if you're not going to do that? None of us wanted to rehash the first one. We were so proud of it, and no one wanted to tarnish that thing that we were proud of. It had to be bigger, crazier, more dangerous.
Q3: What was it like to film the big chase sequences?
Ed Helms: That was the biggest action sequence I'd ever been a part of, and it's intense. It's a crazy operation.
Bradley Cooper: It shows you what a wider scope this second one takes on as opposed to the first one, because there's this whole espionage element to it. It's Bangkok, and there are helicopter and car chases. The first one was very sort of gorilla filmmaking, and this one had a lot of moving parts.
Zach Galifianakis: There was a helicopter shot, and I wasn't thrilled by that. We were on a boat, and there was a helicopter filming us and I got scared.
Q4: What is it about Leslie Chow that makes him tick?
Ken Jeong: Chow loves chaos. In the first movie, you saw a glimpse of that when Zach Galifianakis' character falls down for the second time. Even in the midst of his kidnapping, and he's so angry, he finds the time to go "Bad guy fall down, funny." He finds time to laugh even in moments of chaos. I extended that philosophy to the nines in the second movie.
He's a sociopath. He's elements of The Joker in The Dark Knight. He's just elements of (Joe) Pesci in Goodfellas. He's got a little bit of everything going on. There are a lot of inspirations for me to draw on in this one, and it was great to play it, with an added wrinkle.
Q5: You filmed a special feature for the DVD. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Ken Jeong: Chow's in a tuk-tuk bringing people along the streets of Bangkok and introducing them to certain places like, "This is a good place to find good lady. This is good place to find a good man. This is a good place to find good lady boy, and this Sears."
It was really funny for them to allow me, in home video, to go around the streets of Bangkok. That was some of the most fun I had shooting the movie. I love doing stuff like that for home video and for the DVD, because you want to give the viewer another added dimension of how you make a film. I love blooper reels, I love outtakes because that's where you really see the real actors and how we are. You just see each other having a laugh every day, and it was great.
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