She took samples of her work to the Museum of Modern Art, left them for two weeks. When she later returned, the receptionist said, “I have to tell you we all had a good laugh … because they said it’s not possible for somebody to do all that; it’s just not possible.” This impossibility is what Bassett has extricated from the wreckage of Bettina’s life. Prolific is far too tame a word to describe her oeuvre. It has to be seen to be believed.
Bettina’s life has enough human interest for the august New York Times to do an article, along with a short video. Style magazine did a short article. We Are The Market, a New York-based consultancy blog, featured Sam in their “Talking Points” column.
The buzz is getting around, slowly, but most certainly.
Bettina is getting her life back, thanks to Bassett and some of the residents of the famed and (ahem!) eccentric Chelsea Hotel, former home of Pearl, whom you may know as Janis Joplin. It was also once the home of Samuel Clemens, whom you may know as Mark Twain. The Chelsea is a Grand Old Gal and has been the home of many an artist, and it serves as a backdrop for most of Bassett's film.
Can you imagine sitting outside somebody’s door for two months, trying to talk to that somebody? That’s what Bassett did. He saw what was behind the façade of what others saw as a very eccentric (read SCREAMING BONKERS!) elderly lady who apparently could no longer properly care for herself. The owners of the Chelsea were in the process of trying to evict her. She was living in the hallway of her two-room apartment, sleeping on a deck chair, because the remainder of the place was wall-to-wall, nearly floor-to-ceiling boxes. A good part of the year she wore a heavy coat because her heating system was out of order, and the apartment was too full for the workmen to get in. As Bassett sat on a stool in front of her apartment day after day, looking at the signs plastered all over her door, he may have thought, “They’re right. She is bonkers.” One of the signs read, according to the Times article, "'The Institute for Noumenological Research' and listed intellectual, artistic, and philosophical principles. Other scrawlings — such as “Help Me, I’m Being Killed” — were more disturbing."
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