The bizarre saga recounted in the documentary Finders Keepers may set off a flicker of recognition for some viewers, as it appeared in many News-of-the-Weird segments in 2007. After North Carolinian John Wood’s left foot was amputated following a plane crash, he subsequently had the severed appendage embalmed, for peculiar but sentimental reasons. He then tucked it inside an old barbecue smoker in his storage unit. After some missed payments, the grill was auctioned off to local wheeler-dealer Shannon Whisnant, who made every effort to spin his ghoulish discovery into a kind of nano-celebrity. The ownership of the foot thereafter became contentious, leading to the surreal spectacle of two men laying a legal claim to a mummified extremity.
As in Tabloid and The King of Kong, the events and characters examined in Finders Keepers naturally suggest an outrageous narrative full of colorful personalities. It’s the sort of only-in-America story that could have easily been developed into an outlandish short, one that invites snickering at the rubes and their reality-television tussle over a foot. However, directors J. Clay Tweel and Bryan Carberry utilize the film’s feature-length running time to craft something much more melancholy and unsettling.
For the first 30 minutes or so, the film exorcises the haughty chuckles from the viewer with a cheeky recounting of the tale as the sensationalist media portrayed it. Then the film gradually delves into the family lives of Wood and Whisnant, peeling back the layers of facile caricature to reveal the ambition, failures, and tragedy behind the men and the people around them. The end result is a feature that is more Rich Hill than Jerry Springer: a grim portrait of rural, blue-collar America negotiating—with little success—a briarwood of false hopes, suffocating expectations, and exploitative forces.
Finder's Keepers opens Friday, October 2 at Plaza Frontenac Cinema and runs through Wednesday, October 7. St. Louis-based executive producer Walker Diebel will be at the opening-night screening. Read our Q&A with him here.
