Devising a meticulously messy suite for ‘The Hangover’

For “The Hangover,” a movie about a bachelor party gone a little too wild, set decorator Danielle Berman didn’t have a lot to guide her when thinking about how to trash the hotel suite the partyers wake up to. “Not a lot was actually written” in the script, she says. “The scene was just described as ‘the destroyed suite.’ ” The crew had two days to prepare the results of the debauchery. “We just had to think: These guys took a form of Ecstasy. What would they be obsessed about doing?” So, the crew built an extreme house of cards, tied sheets into a swing and attacked the furniture with a sword. One crew member spent a week gluing beer bottles together. Some blow-up dolls, believe it or not, were deemed too risque.

-- Patrick Kevin Day