Ted Lehane
Writer/Filmmaker
Tumble
dry
A FILM I SHOT IN 1997 AND AM FINISHING NOW
A 19-minute black-and-white short, shot on 16mm in a tenement laundromat on the Lower East Side of New York City. February 1997. One location. One night.
Patrick Danaher is a grip. He is nine months sober. Late at night, with nowhere else to be that is comfortable to retreat to, he goes to the laundromat. He has been there for a while. His clotes just need another round to dry out, so, he waits.
The dryer counts down. The room fills up. The night asks him something he’s not sure he can answer.
The Film
The Filmmaker
I made this film at 26, nine months into my own sobriety. The stillness in it is not a style. It’s a practice.
Patrick alone, in a laundromat at night, is drawn from memory.
The laundromat was real. The room was the kind of place you go to when you cannot go somewhere else. Bright. Public. Far away from the bars.
For most of my career, I have been a Grip, below the line, doing the physical work of filmmaking, keeping things steady, moving weight, solving problems no one notices when they’re solved correctly. I have been part of filmmaking my whole professional life without finishing my own film. This is my attempt to say something about the small moments.
Ted Lehane
Key Grip · IATSE Local 52 · Educator, Stockade Works · tedlehane.com
The Wait
The film has been in post-production, on and off, for 29 years.
That spring after we shot it, the print was, for lack of a better term, held for ransom, $300, which in 1997, for an independent film, was about four days’ salary. The footage was transferred to tape in 1998, DV in 2003, and a hard drive in 2016. Two editors engaged with it over the years and stepped away.
There was also this: at 26, I couldn’t separate myself from the material. I was disappointed in aspects of what we’d made, and I let that become inertia. I couldn’t see Patrick clearly because I was still too close to him.
I can see him now. The story is its own thing.
My job is to serve it.
Where it is now
​The footage exists approximately 90 minutes of 16mm, fully digitized and synced. An editor is engaged. An as-shot script has been prepared. We are in active post-production, in the completion funding phase.
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Footage ~90 minutes, 16mm, digitized and synced
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Editor Jay Ness, Minneapolis
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Stage Post-production — completion funding
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Fiscal sponsor : Fractured Atlas​​
The film will incorporate a small number of close-up inserts: clothes tumbling in the drum, the agitation cycle, the timer counting down.
They give the audience a physical sense of time — the dryer doing its work while Patrick waits..
Help Finish the Film
Tumble Dry was shot in 1997. The footage has been waiting ever since.
We are raising funds to complete post-production: editorial, sound design, color grading, and final delivery. The production cost has been absorbed. What’s needed now is the finishing.
The dryer has buzzed. Help us open the door.
For Funders and Grant Panels:
Budget details and project documentation are available on request.
Tumble Dry is fiscally sponsored through Fractured Atlas. All contributions are tax-deductible.Contact: eryanlehane@gmail.com · tedlehane.com