“The Hangover”: Based on a True Story?

New Hollywood insider-type info is suggesting that The Hangover was not merely an off-the-cuff fantasy dreamt up by screenwriters Scott Moore and Jon Lucas and director Todd Phillips, but rather an embellishment of a studio player’s actual story.  Producer Chris Bender has done such actual historical movies before:

This is the 3rd time he’s taken a real-life Hollywood producer’s life story and put it on the big screen. You may already know this, but American Pie is based on Bender’s high school experiences. Jason Biggs plays Bender, who got a producer credit on the pic. AndJust Friends also was based on Bender’s life and he got a producer credit.

In the case of The Hangover, the real setting was indeed a Vegas bachelor party gone wrong and the real story went like this…  

It all started with Chris Bender who heard the story of how his Hollywood friend went mysteriously missing from his bachelor party in Las Vegas. The pal was film producer Tripp Vinson (The Guardian, The Number 23, and now the Red Dawn remake) who in 2002 was engaged to marry Endeavor motion picture lit agent Adriana Alberghetti. Like always happens, the real facts don’t quite match up with the movie. There was no wedding scheduled that same weekend. Instead, the bachelor party was held months earlier. It consisted of 30 guys booked into the Hard Rock Hotel for a wild night of partying at a succession of Vegas restaurants, clubs and strip joints.

You’ll remember the Hard Rock Hotel as the location of Jeremy Shockey’s lost Memorial Day weekend as well.  Vinson described the night:

“I remember being a drunken fool, as you’re supposed to do at your bachelor party, and having a really good time with all my friends,” Vinson told me. “But then I remember being a mess. And when people are f*cked up, crazy sh*t happens.” That’s when Tripp went missing from his bash. Even now, all Vinson knows is, “I got separated from my friends, and I blacked out. And when I was revived, I was in a strip club being threatened with a very, very large bill I was supposed to pay. It was not a fun experience at the time, but it made for a funny story.”

The tigers, babies, and Mike Tysons were all Hollywood license.  Vinson wasn’t even aware the movie was being made initially, nor did he see any money from it.  Important lesson: next time you black out and wake up in strip club with a hearty bill and a lot of strippers pointing at you yelling something about “…tried to pee on me!” remember that your life is worth making a movie over.  Do not part with the rights to your story for a pittance.

Source, with more (boring) backstory about the production: Deadline Hollywood Daily.