Emily Dickinson once wrote -

Death is a Dialogue between
The Spirit and the Dust.
“Dissolve” says Death — The Spirit “Sir
I have another Trust” –

Death doubts it — Argues from the Ground –
The Spirit turns away
Just laying off for evidence
An Overcoat of Clay.

Patricia DeCou passed away just after this past Christmas. Most of you knew her as “Mary Brown” from BLAIR WITCH. I did not personally know Patricia, but the gang here have pa-lenty an anecdote and story on her.

Though her appearance in BLAIR WITCH was but one minute, “Mary Brown” became one of the most discussed supporting characters from BLAIR on the internet and at water coolers across the world.

I suppose all of us have a Patricia DeCou in our lives at one point or another; an eccentric full of stories and opinions, or as Winston Churchill once said “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”

Was it the mystery of Mary Brown, or the brief time she had on screen that left us all in profound curiosity of who this woman was? Or perhaps was it the texture and character Patricia put into her role as “Mary Brown.” Exactly how much did Patricia have to put into that character, or was Patricia simply being herself? This is a question that surfaces time and again.

I don’t envy Ed and Dan’s task of having to edit BLAIR; 22 hours down to 86 minutes is like squeezing a Mac truck into a thimble. And that Mac is fully loaded with content and material.

“Mary’s” scene goes much further than that brief one minute, more-so nearly an hour. And within that hour Heather needs to use the “facilities” if you will, whereas Mary offers Heather the use of her bathroom.

Once inside the trailer, as Mary entertains Mike and Josh, Heather pokes around cautiously, ever mindful she is snooping where she should not be doing so.

She had already done so before they knocked on Mary’s door. Upon entering the trailer park, when they (finally) found Mary’s casa, Heather snooped all around the exterior of the trailer, checking out sheds in the back, boxes of nuts, berries and Quaker oatmeal, even the oil tank below the trailer itself.

Now inside Mary’s home alone, enroute to… a concentrated constitutional if you will, Heather snooped around the sparsely furnished abode in virtual darkness. The trailer had no working electricity. Images of Jesus, mother’s day and PTA cards, angels in tinfoil, candles as well as stacks upon stacks of Avon catalogues were all she discovered.

Once inside the bathroom, also rather dark… that is to say - as dark as Ed Sanchez’s colon, Heather nearly had a stroke when she discoverd not visually… but touched… what she thought was a body. A rather… hairy body. ‘Turned out though to be a furry suit of some kind laying in a corner, but that did not negate at all Heather’s reaction as she hauled ass out of there to resume her interview of Mary outside the trailer.

Again, I don’t envy Ed or Dan in editing BLAIR WITCH. There is so much incredible material in those 22 hours, where do you draw the line? Therein lies the talent of directing and editing.

And in “Mary Brown’s” scene, it was Patricia DeCou who commands every bit of it. Not as a supporting actress, not for the brief time she had on camera, but as one who thoroughly immersed herself into the role, into that world, into that head of Mary Brown’s.

But did she? Was she acting? Or was she simply playing the role of Mary Brown as Patricia DeCou?

I began this by saying we have all known a “Mary Brown” at one point or another in our lives, but in hindsight I think perhaps not. There can only be one Patricia DeCou, and only Patricia DeCou is qualified to be Patricia DeCou.

And of course we all may have known her as Mary Brown, but outside of that one minute on screen, outside of that hour in raw footage, she was Patricia DeCou, born Jan. 14, 1934, in New Orleans, a woman with a love of history, the arts and theater, a devoted mother of three - Christopher, Jennifer and Amy, she was also a grandmother to 10, great-grandmother to 4, a sister to Barbara and Donna, and wife to husband Thompson W. Jr.

Ed and Dan met Patricia when she was the only student (yes, a student at age of 63) at Montgomery College that answered the call for interns to work as an art technician. Right afterwards they immediately cast her as Mary Brown.

That was likely the easiest casting ever made.

Patricia MacDonald DeCou 1934-2007