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Michael Alan Rubin Says 'Hangover Part II' Really Happened -- to Him: He's Suing Studio For Allegedly Taking His Story

Categories: Lawsuits

hangover 2 photo.JPG
The Hangover Part II / Warner Bros.
This shit is real.
If your experiences were the basis of one of the chapters of The Hangover franchise, wouldn't you just let it stay in Vegas (or, in this case, Thailand)?

A man who claims that really happened -- to him no less -- is suing the makers of the Hangover Part II for allegedly stealing its story from him.

The partier in question is Michael Alan Rubin, who aimed his Los Angeles U.S. District Court filing, according to the The Wrap, at ...


... Warner Bros., director Todd Phillips, The Hangover Part II writers and his (now presumably ex-) wife, Tamayo Otsuki, alleging that they conspired to steal the movie's plot from Rubin's own experiences, as well as a movie treatment he was working on.

It might help here to recount the plot to the Hangover version nobody saw. IMDB:

Stu is getting married. Along with Doug, Phil, and his soon-to-be brother-in-law Teddy, he regretfully invites Alan to Thailand for the wedding. After a quiet night on the beach with a beer and toasting marshmallows by the camp fire, Stu, Alan and Phil wake up in a seedy apartment in Bangkok. Doug is back at the resort, but Teddy is missing, there's a monkey with a severed finger, Alan's head is shaved, Stu has a tattoo on his face, and they can't remember any of it. The wolf-pack retrace their steps through strip clubs, tattoo parlors and cocaine-dealing monkeys on the streets of Bangkok as they try and find Teddy before the wedding.

So, just thinking out loud here: Rubin's story would somehow have to involve a backstory about four guys who previously had a Las Vegas adventure? And, uh, just asking, Mr. Rubin, do you have a shadow wolf-pack? And uh, the money, finger and shaved head? That all happened?

Um, okay.

Rubin says that friction during he and Otsuki's wedding drove him to Thailand and then Goa, where he worked on writing his own Hangover Part II-esque treatment.

The suit claims:

The plot and theme of Hangover 2 is copied from the treatment Mickey and Kirin and also from the private real life incident of the plaintiff, because the protagonist in Hangover 2 travels from the United States to an Asian country to marry his Asian girlfriend ...

Yeah, as the The Wrap notes, that never happens.

What's more, Rubin is pissed because the actual film took his story places he wouldn't go -- drugs, transvestites.

If you ask us, that would only lend to the Hangover-ness of the story. Good luck with your suit, Michael.

Oh, and Goa. It's known for its psychedelic-traveler culture. Just a sayin.'

[@dennisjromero/djromero@laweekly.com]

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