'Method' acting

Moviegoers in the NY Film Festival filled Alice Tully Hall to capacity March. 5 for The new sony Pictures Classics' "A Harmful Method," with helmer David Cronenberg, film writer Christopher Hampton and star Michael Fassbender one of the participants. The afterparty was in the Empire Hotel, where visitors came outdoors-air roof restaurant drinking a novelty cocktail, properly known as, because of the movie they'd just seen, Bitter and Twisted (grapefruit/vodka/bitters). Because the movie is about Freud, Jung, and Jung's patient-mistress Sabina Spielrein, everybody associated with "A Harmful Method" was willing to speak psychoanalysis. Fassbender, thinking to his previous movie assignment "X-Males," thought his Magneto wouldn't say anything around the couch. "He'd just start having fun with individuals little metal ball devices that everybody has." Regarding Jung, "I'd want to speak to him about his sex with Sabina," Cronenberg stated. For Hampton, he stated, "I have really never been examined, and I am terrified of being examined -- just in case they fix me." Contact Variety Staff at news@variety.com