July 24, 2026

Writes Lethem:

"Harry Dean Stanton’s Jerry Schue doesn’t get on-screen until a full hour of Ulu Grosbard’s Straight Time (1978) has passed. Unlike Orson Welles as Harry Lime in The Third Man, Stanton’s character hasn’t been discussed, chewed over, anticipated, and foreshadowed for that first hour in which he doesn’t appear; quite the opposite. Jerry, a former robber gone straight, has tucked himself deep in a hiding place, a suburban life nearly as anonymized as the witness protection program. As if respecting the privacy of Jerry’s attempt to erase his earlier existence, the film has left him unglimpsed and unalluded-to. (In fact, the witness he is trying to protect is himself, and it is a protection program destined to fail, because the one piece of evidence of his former life he cannot disguise is his own restless, agitated self.) Once catalyzed out of his slumber by Max Dembo (Dustin Hoffman), Stanton-as-Jerry, in turn, catalyzes the second half of this great film. His pivot back to a criminal life mirrors that of the lead character, Max."