'The Hangover'remedy: How Zach Galifianakis guards his funny bone

Meteoric fame, the kind that comes with the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time, brings its own type of hangover. Ever since 2009's"The Hangover,"Zach Galifianakishas had a little more trouble navigating the streets ofBrooklyn, where he lives part-time during filming of the third season of hisHBOshow,"Bored to Death."

"What I do is walk with headphones on, hoping people get the hint,"Galifianakis tells The News."People are generally very, very nice ... it's when people sit down at a restaurant with you. They think they can just sit down and chat with you and go,‘Remember the time?'

"Yeah, I remember the time, I was in the g—damn movie,"he deadpans.

He'll have to get used to even more attention with his next damn movie,"The Hangover Part II,"opening Friday.

The film reunites co-stars Galifianakis,Bradley CooperandEd Helms, directorTodd Phillipsand the premise that rocketed the first"Hangover"to $474 million worldwide at the box office. Once again, the three bumbling friends wake up in a trashed hotel room just before a friend's wedding, missing one of their group, with no memory of the debauchery that put them in their predicament.

This time, however, they have to navigate the humid and seedy streets ofBangkok, which ratchets up both the stakes and the humor. Think drug-dealing monkeys and hermaphrodite hookers.

"Bangkok the city itself helped us with our perspiration and helped us with the way that we looked awful,"says Galifianakis."The great thing about the‘Hangover' movies is that you don't have to take care of yourself while you're shooting. It's better if you don't."

The Bangkok set was 8,560 miles and a world away fromNew York City, where Galifianakis arrived fromNorth Carolina16 years ago.

Interested in standup comedy, he got his first gig— all three minutes of it — in the back of Hamburger Harry's inTimes Square. Recounting his first joke, he warns that it's not exactly comedy gold:"I was with this girl the other night and we ended up at her house and she said,‘Hey look, you can crash on my futon.' And I looked at her and I said, ‘I don't sleep on anything that rhymes with crouton.'

"I think I heard a cough and a fork drop at the same time,"he says."Silence. But after that night, I remember thinking to myself— not to be too dramatic, but I do remember — ‘This is the path I'm going to take.'"

That path included the walk between his"triple illegal sublet"on Ludlow St. in theEast Villageup to Standup NY, a comedy club on 78th and Broadway, to save on subway fare.

That path also included horrific jobs to support his passion. He toiled as a busboy at a strip club and worked atWebster Hall, where"I crawled on my hands and knees on the floor and picked up beer bottles."Part of him still misses those days, Galifianakis says with a delivery that makes it hard to tell if he's joking.

Over the decade and a half before"The Hangover,"he flirted with success: recurring roles on television series like"Boston Common"and"Tru Calling,"a short-lived talk show onVH1, short scene-stealing bits in a handful of movies.

Long before many people could spell Galifianakis, the comedian was on Phillips' radar after the New York-born director caught a show inLos Angeles. Phillips was casting the role in his first major movie, 2000's"Road Trip,"that ultimately went toTom Green, but came close to hiring Galifianakis instead.

What appealed to Phillips, who has collaborated with Galifianakis on his last three movies, including 2010's"Due Date,"even then?

"He has the most innocent, gentle eyes, so he's able to play those characters that can say or do anything and {you realize}‘Oh, he didn't really mean it like that,'"says Phillips.

For example, one of Galifianakis' quips from the first"Hangover"could have gone awry without the right delivery."Like when he says,‘I'm not supposed to be within 200 feet of a school. Or aChuck E. Cheese,' they know he's not a molester,"says Phillips,"they know he just likes to hang out."

That's true of the real Galifianakis too: He likes to hang out. Hollywood success afforded him the chance to purchase a farm in North Carolina, but he'd still rather walk across theBrooklyn Bridgethan be chauffeured to the other side.

He also worries he'll get soft if he doesn't get on stage in front of a live audience more often.

"As a comedian to have that recognition almost is anti-comedy to me,"he says."We're not supposed to be the ones who get that kind of attention, so I'm a little bit sensitive about it. I don't want to soil what brought me there in the first place."

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