'Method' acting

Moviegoers at the NY Film Festival filled Alice Tully Hall to capacity Oct. 5 for Sony Pictures Classics' "A Dangerous Method," with helmer David Cronenberg, screenwriter Christopher Hampton and star Michael Fassbender among the attendees. The afterparty was at the Empire Hotel, where guests wandered the open-air rooftop restaurant sipping a novelty cocktail, appropriately called, given the movie they'd just seen, Bitter and Twisted (grapefruit/vodka/bitters). Since the movie is all about Freud, Jung, and Jung's patient-mistress Sabina Spielrein, everyone involved with "A Dangerous Method" was more than willing to talk psychoanalysis. Fassbender, thinking back to his previous movie assignment "X-Men," thought his Magneto wouldn't say anything on the couch. "He'd just start playing with those little metal ball assemblies that everyone has." Regarding Jung, "I'd want to talk to him about his sex with Sabina," Cronenberg said. As for Hampton, he said, "I've actually never been analyzed, and I'm frightened of being analyzed -- in case they fix me." Contact Variety Staff at news@variety.com