Posted on Dec 11, 2005

First published:  Dec. 11, 2005

Upstairs somewhere, the actor Tim Daly is yelling, his familiar voice shaded with fright and a hint of panic. “Cassie! Cassie!'' he shouts.

Mary-Beth Taylor involuntarily winces, her head ducking slightly, although she's one flight away and has heard Daly call out several times before. She laughs at herself.

“It scares me every time he yells,” she says, then whispers, mock-conspiratorially, “I guess we really are making a scary movie here.”

Daly shouts again, his character summoning another as a scene is shot, “Cassie!”

Taylor flinches and rolls her eyes. She says, “He got me again.” She's in a downstairs parlor of the Batcheller Mansion, the familiar High Victorian Gothic house on Circular Street in Saratoga Springs that is serving as one of the main locations for “The Skeptic,” a supernatural thriller written and directed by Taylor's husband, Tennyson Bardwell.

In the film, a lawyer played by Daly inherits a house from his aunt and is plunged into a mystery of flashbacks, a repressed abusive childhood and spectral presences. Besides the Batcheller Mansion, “The Skeptic” has filmed scenes in Buskirk, at the Saratoga courthouse, on the Northway, in a graveyard, at Skidmore and Union colleges and a laboratory set built in a warehouse in Ballston Spa.

Even as the Taylor-Bardwell couple has worked 12- to 18-hour days on “The Skeptic's” eight-week shoot, likely to conclude this week, their attentions could not be exclusive. Their first movie, “Dorian Blues,” a sweet coming-of-age story about a gay teen that was also shot locally, is showing up at an increasing number of screens nationwide this fall following award-winning appearances at more than a dozen film festivals.

Four years after the Ballston Spa-based Taylor-Bardwells completed principal photography on “Dorian Blues,” the picture is finally reaching audiences in New York City, Los Angeles, Denver, Washington and elsewhere; it should arrive in the Capital Region this month or next.

“If you'd told me four years ago that I'd be doing another film but still dealing with `Dorian,' I would've thought something was seriously wrong,” says Bardwell, chatting recently over lunch during a break in filming. But, says the director, “at least I'm doing another film.”

Up a flight

And it's a film that is a significant step up from “Dorian Blues.” Besides Daly, the cast includes such recognizable, respected B-list actors as Edward Herrmann, Robert Prosky, Tom Arnold, Aida Turturro and Zoe Saldana. The last was most recently in “Pirates of the Caribbean” and played Ashton Kutcher's girlfriend (and Bernie Mac's daughter) in “Guess Who.” An in-demand actress who has worked in a dozen films in the past few years, Saldana plays Cassie, a psychic helping Daly's character understand his haunted house. The crew totals 40, the cast half that.

“It's an amazing cast. For a second-time writer-director to get a cast like this is almost unheard of, and it's all a testament to the quality of the script,” says David B. Silipigno, one of the film's executive producers. The Saratoga financier founded and is funding Saratoga Studios, a production company created to be a vehicle for Bardwell's future films and, eventually, other projects. Silipigno's fellow executive producer and Saratoga Studio's executive vice president is Paul Bardwell, the director's brother.

Silipigno and Paul Bardwell are partners in Saratoga businesses including mortgage and title companies and a venture-capital firm. On a set populated by scruffy-faced electricians, grips and production assistants wearing T-shirts, fleece pullovers and cargo pants, the two stand out as moneymen, their suits even sleeker than their grooming. Furthering their image is their transportation: Silipigno's 2006 Bentley, a $180,000 car.

Saratoga Studios is the first commercial cultural effort for the pair, but Silipigno, through his David B. Silipigno Foundation, which he started in 2004, has made more than a million dollars in philanthropic contributions, including sponsoring this year's Larkfest in Albany to the tune of $20,000.

He is also a convicted felon, having pleaded guilty in 2003 to federal wire fraud in connection with the misappropriation of millions of dollars while trying to keep afloat his now-defunct mortgage bank National Finance Corp.

Capitalizing on talent

Speaking of himself and Paul Bardwell, Silipigno says, “We followed the success of (`Dorian Blues'), and we approached Tennyson and Mary-Beth with the idea of creating a studio around him. We recognize Tennyson's talent, and we want to capitalize on that. I'm here strictly for business reasons, but filmmaking is more exciting than the mortgage business.”

He continues, “I see great things for this project. You've got a talented, on-the-cusp-of-greatness writer-director matching up with aggressive businesspeople at the perfect time. We were told that we had no shot at getting a lot of the actors we eventually got. I credit all that back to the quality of the script.”

Says Paul Bardwell, “As people were reading it, as it was going around, this movie never got a door slammed in its face.”

Herrmann, an actor with 80-some credits, from Martin Scorsese's “The Aviator” to Dodge TV commercials, was the first to sign on, according to Taylor, followed by Daly, Prosky and Arnold. The presence of name actors helped collect a crew of New York City and Los Angeles professionals, and cast and crew alike are working for well below their usual scale. The film's cinematographer, Claudio Rocha, for instance, who has shot dozens of films, is getting less than half his regular paycheck, according to Taylor.

“We didn't overpay for this; it's truly an independent film,” says Silipigno.

No one involved in “The Skeptic” will discuss the film's budget except in comparative terms: It's “way more” than the $185,000 “Dorian Blues” budget but “way, way under” the $10 million ceiling usually affixed to the “independent” category, says Taylor. Somewhere in that huge range is what it will cost to get “The Skeptic” ready for submission next fall to the January 2007 Sundance film festival.

Large-scale films can be made faster, but indies like this one often take a couple of years to arrive on commercial cinema screens.

“We have to deal with budget realities,” says Paul Bardwell. “There were some big-name people interested who just couldn't step down to our level of budget.” Adds Silipigno, “And there were some other big-name people who did want to do it, but Tennyson just didn't feel were right.” Again, he, Paul Bardwell and Taylor all refuse to be more specific. But later, on the set, Tennyson Bardwell can't help himself and is overheard confiding to a crewmember that among the actors he considered were Liev Schreiber, Sam Rockwell and Alec Baldwin.

On the scene

Upstairs in the Batcheller Mansion, a bed-and-breakfast the production rented for the duration of its shoot, Bardwell is sitting on a bed in a small back bedroom while, in a larger, brighter bedroom next door, a child is being beaten with a curtain rod. Bardwell intently watches the scene, intended to be a flashback, on a small monitor. As the camera rises from behind a chair, the view is across a broad bed toward a boy of perhaps 5 or 6, grimacing and trying to stifle his screams in a pillow as a woman whacks away at his backside. Eleven seconds pass.

“Cut!” Bardwell calls through the wall, and the word is repeated by crewmembers. Bardwell goes into the other bedroom, offers instruction to the actors and returns to his perch in front of the monitor for four or five more takes. Each time the woman strikes savagely, the shadow of her sweeping arm large on the wall, the child screams, looking for all the world like an abused kid who will grow up into a tormented adult, not a pretending boy, about to laugh minutes later as a protective pad, hidden from the camera, is untied from the back of his pants.

“Good, good, good,” says Bardwell. “Let's move on.”