Before the New York premiere of his new film, Limitless, director Neil Burger was more than willing to expound on the ethics of its premise—in which an unmotivated novelist (Bradley Cooper) suddenly gains, via an experimental new pill, the ability to use his entire brain. "It's strange that they're repurposing things like Adderall and Ritalin to have more focus, and things like that. It's a strange thing. Obviously, the movie is a turbocharged version of that. But it's really, the question is, is your brain just like a computer and you're adding more RAM?" he mused on the red carpet. "And are you really focused, or are you just becoming kind of like a really productive accountant?"

The movie, besides being something of a fast-paced thrill ride, certainly does give rise to questions of a bigger nature—and at the premiere after-party, at Buddakan, we noticed plenty of people entrenched in bioethics discussions (a first for the meatpacking district, we think) while sipping DeLeon Tequila cocktails. Two such partygoers, NBC News anchor Stone Phillips and Gossip Girl actor Matthew Settle, had strong opinions on the film—and its implications. "I would recommend it, I liked it, I would tell my friends to go see it. All of my friends, I would say, to go see it. We're living in an overmedicated country, and I think it's an interesting film for people to see," Phillips said.

"It's going to be interesting to see where society takes this, and if they actually start producing drugs that can enhance our capabilities," Settle chimed in. "We've already enhanced our capabilities in so many ways, by medicine, and we're about to become hybrid human machines. We were talking about singularity, you know, Raymond Kurzweil's talking about machines achieving consciousness in 25 years. It's a terrifying world." Heavy! After checking in with Settle about Gossip Girl ("We're going to try to get Stone on it next year!"), we left them to their conversation—both were clearly enjoying it.