Director Scott Derrickson honoured his late friend, actor James Ransone, after he was left off the Oscar In Memoriam montage.
The Academy Awards In Memoriam tribute is always a bit fraught; every year, many deserving souls are left off, for reasons largely inscrutable to the viewing audience – it’s hard to square why a beloved actor gets cut, when some largely anonymous octogenarian agent gets in.
This year, among those who weren’t graced with an appearance on the big screen at the Dolby Theatre include Eric Dane, Julian McMahon, Danielle Spencer, Loretta Swit, James Van Der Beek, George Wendt, Demond Wilson, and character actor James Ransone. To be fair, they’ve all got a place on the Academy’s In Memoriam website.
But the snubbing of James Ransone did not escape the notice of director Scott Derrickson, who cast Ransone in five of his films: Sinister, Sinister 2, The Black Phone, V/H/S/85, and Black Phone 2. Ransone, who died by suicide on December 19 at the age of 46, was also familiar to viewers of IT: Chapter 2, where he played the adult Eddie Kaspbrak, and The Wire, where he made an indelible mark as the self-destructive Ziggy Sobotka in the second season.
Writing on X, Derrickson said, “The Oscars In Memoriam ignored him, but I cannot. He was my friend. I put him in five films.”
“In early January I buried James “PJ” Ransone after he committed suicide… He was a complex, funny, talented, and undeniably reckless person. He was wildly alive and deeply loved.”
Derrickson went on to exhort people not to trash Ransone, noting that “he said some infuriating things online” but that “he cried with regret for all of that.”
Ransone’s final screen appearances were in the the season 2 Poker Face episode “One Last Job, and Derrickson’s own Black Phone 2.
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