Hot Movie Cameo: Mike Tyson
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There’s a whole hive of buzz about The Hangover. It’s the summer’s hot laugh machine, a classic of crass. But the knockout comedy punch comes in a cameo from, of all people, Mike Tyson. The former heavyweight champ and lightning rod for controversy plays himself. Hell, he’s good at it (check him out in the documentary Tyson). In The Hangover, Tyson thinks that three dudes (Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis) on a bachelor party romp in Vegas have stolen his pet Bengal tiger. He’s not pleased. When they enter Tyson’s lair, he uses his fists, but not before doing a hilarious air-drum solo and karaoke to Phil Collins’ “I Can Feel It Coming in the Air Tonight.” Take a second. Let the image sink in.
“It’s a great song,” says Tyson, who insists that director Todd Philips put him up to the gag. “I slipped on the words periodically but other than that it went well.” Tyson says the pet tiger idea isn’t so bizarre, I did have four or five of them at one point,” he reveals. Really? “Yeah, I’d sleep with them.” Really? “They got too big around twelve years old and then I had an incident in Texas when somebody accidentally got attacked by them.” Again, really? “It was a severe attack, and so um, I had to release them to a zoo.” And what does Tyson keep now as pets? “I just have pigeons.” Now there’s a cameo for The Hangover sequel.