Photograph by Melinda Smith
St. Louis native Walker Deibel is an entrepreneur with irons in a lot of fires. His enterprises and investments have ranged from a private book-printing business to a supply-chain management company, but his most conspicuous passion—financially and personally—is independent filmmaking. Through Deibel Films, he has served as an executive producer on five successful feature productions to date, creating buzz and racking up awards on the festival circuit: Print the Legend, Finders Keepers, Rolling Papers, Some Beasts, and Five Nights in Maine. This Friday, October 2 marks the St. Louis premiere of Finders Keepers, which chronicles the bizarre and surprisingly poignant tale of the legal, media, and ethical clash over an amputated foot. St. Louis Magazine's film critic Andrew Wyatt spoke with Deibel about how this remarkable documentary evolved, how passing on a film can be a creative contribution, and which Hollywood idol turned him into a tongue-tied fanboy.
Finders Keepers delves into a bizarre, only-in-America news story that that may have flickered on some viewers’ radar briefly in 2007, but has likely faded from memory for most: John Wood's embalmed, amputated foot was discovered inside a barbecue smoker purchased by Shannon Whisnant. When you first became involved in the production, what was your recollection, if any, of this strange saga?
I had not even heard of it! I had no idea. Here's the raw truth: I did not want to get involved with this film at all. I turned it down the first time it came to me. I said to myself, “This is way too weird.” It involved celebrities like Jerry Springer and Judge Mathis, who sort of need people like Shannon Whisnant and John Wood. That sort of exploitative reality television is not a high-level genre. It feeds off an audience that wants to feel superior to the characters. I felt that if Finders Keepers was done wrong, I did not want my name on it. I didn't want to invest in it, I didn't want to be affiliated with it. It was just too risky. I thought that this was either going to be a cult classic, or it was going to be a complete disaster. But in the end they just nailed it!
How did such a film cross your desk in the first place, then?
The film originally came to me via Chad Troutwine, who was a producer on Freakonomics. Chad was working with producer Seth Gordon and director J. Clay Tweel on Print the Legend, while also working on Finders Keepers sort of in the background. Finders Keepers had actually begun way back in 2007 when the original events were occurring, and it depends heavily on the publicity that the story was getting at that time.
I passed on the film initially, but Chad brought it back to me months later, when it was taking shape in a much better way. I was still very much on the fence. I had high confidence in the team, and the story is absolutely insane, but I was nervous. It felt like a gamble. The film had to be the absolute best version of itself to be a winner. If it was an average version of itself, it was just going to suck. [Laughs.]
Once I understood Clay Tweel and Bryan Carberry were co-directing, that was an instrumental moment for me. And I really wanted to work with [producers] Ed Cunningham and Seth Gordon, who were just coming off winning an Academy Award for Undefeated. Ultimately, I had so much faith in that team, I decided to go ahead and invest.
My involvement during production was almost exclusively investing in the film and getting it completed. That being said, Ed Cunningham recently mentioned that my turning the film down and convincing Chad that we would turn it down together, that had an impact on the creative direction of the film. When they came to us, they weren't quite there yet, and I think it helped them put fresh eyes on what they were doing. It's weird, though, because I really don't want to take credit, with it being so indirect. [Laughs.]
The tale of the foot and the conflict over its ownership is fascinating in a “truth is stranger than fiction” sort of way, and initially the tone of the film is playful and outlandish, bringing to mind Errol Morris’ documentary Tabloid. Gradually, however, the film becomes a much more melancholy feature that touches on some troubling themes. When you first met with Chad about the picture, was there a sense of where this story was going to lead?
The third act wasn’t there yet. With documentary filmmaking, there’s no script, and that’s always a little worrisome. But if you go back to The King of Kong, I think that Ed Cunningham and Seth Gordon kind of originated the character-driven documentary with that film. I might be out of line by saying something so grandiose, but that’s what I’ve always perceived. They obviously did an excellent job with The King of Kong and have since moved on with their lives. Ed is more in television these days and Seth is still in documentaries, but he doesn’t direct them; he directs more scripted comedies, narratives with big budgets. So I feel like [The King of Kong] opened up an opportunity for Clay to kind of move in and perfect this art. I know I’m harping on Clay, who is outstanding, but I’m not ignoring [co-director] Bryan [Carberry]; what he did was epic. It really was a team with the two of them. But knowing what Clay did with Print the Legend, what he did with Finders Keepers, and what he’s doing next, I think that he’s going to be a guy to watch.
I’m glad you brought up The King of Kong, which on which Tweel was an editor and associate producer. As you point out, that film benefited immensely from the underdog hero and swaggering scoundrel roles that were assumed quite naturally by arcade champions Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell, respectively. At least initially, Finders Keepers likewise seems to have a clear victim and villain in John Wood and Shannon Whisnant, respectively. Wood even has a line in the film where he describes Whisnant as his personal anti-Christ. So that sharply delineated conflict, which is key to the film’s appeal, wasn’t quite there at the outset?
There was an earlier version of the film where the whole first act was anchored in Shannon Whisnant. As soon as I saw it switched so that it was anchored in John Wood, the whole movie came together for me. That right there is the art of documentary filmmaking… You’ve got 20,000 hours of footage and you just have to start slapping paint on the walls, figuratively. “This goes there, this goes there, and this goes there.” You sort of have to look beyond what you’re watching and have faith that the artist can make it happen. With Finders Keepers, I thought, “I don’t know if they can do this one.” [Laughs.] Ultimately, the final film has this parallel with Shannon Whisnant doing whatever he can to get famous, this hunger for fame that he has, and then John Wood’s hunger for drug use. They’re much more similar than they realize. As a viewer, you start to see that towards the middle of the film.
Earlier you mentioned the exploitative angle to the underlying story. In its current form, I think that Finders Keepers does a fine job of confronting its own potentially exploitative aspects. Initially, the conflict between John and Shannon has an almost cartoonish quality, but the film gradually smudges that stark simplicity into something more complicated. John isn’t a benign martyr and Shannon isn’t a diabolical villain; they’re human beings.
You know, when we were filming Print the Legend, [hacker and entrepreneur] Bre Pettis said, “You guys make villains out of people.” I actually did a screening of that film in St. Louis with about 30 local entrepreneurs, and when we asked the audience who related to Bre, almost everyone raised their hand. If you turned around and looked at a different subgroup, however, I think that most people would view Bre unfavorably by the end of that film.
I can tell you that the philosophy of these filmmakers is that they tell their own version of a given story. They are very clear about that all the way through the process. They try to show everything, warts and all, to try to capture for the audience how these events could have happened. It’s almost like the longer form of exploitative television.
As a 30-minute short, it would have been much lighter in tone, with a lot more implicit snickering. The 80-to-90-minute feature film form turns it into something completely different. For me, there’s a turning point about 30 minutes into the film where it starts to dig deeper into John’s backstory, and that transforms the film from a glorified “News of the Weird” segment into a more humane story.
I’ve seen the film twice in a theater, once at Sundance and once at the Kansas City Film Fest. Seeing it with an audience has been great, because they just burst with laughter, especially during the first act. The audiences have been so vibrant. But then there’s that moment in the film where John’s mom says, “It’s a funny story, but it’s born of tragedy.” That lays the foundation for the rest of the film. You start to realize how serious it is.
Have John or Shannon screened the film yet?
Yes, they’ve both seen the film. John was actually at the premiere at Sundance, but Shannon wasn’t able to be there. They responded kind of how you would expect they would. The Woods think it’s a pretty fair reflection of reality, while Shannon thinks that it spends too much time on John.
You said earlier that the filmmakers were committed to making their version of this tale. With a personality like Shannon, I imagine there’s a risk of inadvertently letting him take over the movie to tell his version.
Absolutely. I think there’s a fine balance they have to strike. The filmmakers are trying to show the truth, but just in case you don’t like it, they want you to know that this is their version of the truth. They’re also making a film, a story, and it’s going to be the best dramatized version of that story it can possibly be. They could take this same story and make a horrible movie; it would not be hard. [Laughs.]
Your most recent film, Five Nights in Maine, just had its premiere this month at the Toronto International Film Festival. It's a narrative drama about grieving and family, and has much higher profile in the acting department than your previous productions. The cast includes Dianne Wiest, Rosie Perez, and, of course, David Oyelowo, who performance in Selma left such an impression earlier this year. The film also boasts the great cinematographer Sofian El Fani, who lensed both Timbuktu and Blue Is the Warmest Color. Nothing is a sure thing, obviously, but I would imagine that having such a caliber of talent attached doubtlessly gives an executive producer some confidence.
It was almost a no-brainer. What you’re leaving out is Carly Hugo, who is one of the producers. She and Matt Parker own a company called Loveless. She also did Bachelorette, with Kirsten Dunst, which kind of wrote the book on VOD [video-on-demand] sales. So you’ve got this hidden talent with Carly, who as the producer is sort of the woman on the ground, managing the whole thing. When I call the set, I want to talk to the producer. No disrespect to the director, but you can talk about what’s going on creatively for eight hours and not have a sense for, “Yes, but are we on budget?” [Laughs.]
Five Nights in Maine is director Maris Curran’s first feature, but she’s had tens of thousands of hours as a director. She’s had success in short films, she knows how to direct based on her commercial history. And she was winning every single grant in the country, it seemed, for her script. David Oyelowo had actually not come out with Selma yet. He was clearly on track, his stock was increasing, but we had no way of knowing that he was all of a sudden going to break out and become what he has become. He always had all this potential, but now with Selma, he has the opportunity to act on it.
I’ve got kind of a purpose with the sort of films I get involved in. I get to play this game from the sidelines; this is not my main business. I say “Yes” to only one out of ten projects. Probably less than that, more like one out of 25 or 30. I don’t have to do anything. But there was just a lot of confidence I had in this team, for all the reasons you mention. Five Nights in Maine is very European. It’s quiet, beautiful, remarkable film. It’s a very ambitious subject, and I just think it’s kind of ballsy. I’ve never seen that topic done in that way. Just to work with that cast was amazing.
I’ll tell you, having dinner with David Oyelowo one-on-one on set is awesome, and that’s the sort of experience that comes out of being an EP. But I’ve never been star-struck, until I met Dianne Wiest. I was fumbling and couldn’t think straight. It was the most embarrassing conversation I’ve ever had. I walked away wondering why that just happened. Carly later told me that the people she gets tongue-tied with are the people who she watched on film as a teenager, people who she never thought she would actually be working with. They lived on this other planet, the movie stars. She nailed it; that’s exactly how I felt.
What was Dianne Wiest not in? She was my introduction to Woody Allen: Hannah and Her Sisters was my first Woody Allen. Then you roll in Footloose, Parenthood, The Lost Boys. When VCRs came out that was one movie I had to have, The Lost Boys. I watched it 100,000 times. [Laughs.]
Ultimately, I’m trying to make independent films that are meaningful to me. I want really beautiful, high-quality films. There are all these criteria I use to evaluate whether I’m going to get involved with a project, but the last one I added myself. I was getting all these films that were clearly going to be a commercial success. I could make more money on a horror film or an outrageous comedy than on anything that I’ve done so far. Of course, I absolutely want my film production business to be sustainable, but at the end of the day, that’s not why I’m doing this. I’ve got other businesses for income. And so I’ve got my final criterion. If a film completely fails, if it’s a complete disaster, I want to be able to look at my wife and say, “At least we made a great movie.”
Do you have a distributor yet for Five Nights?
We don’t, but we’re very close. We’re in talks with a lot of people, I’ll just say that. I don’t perceive that Five Nights in Maine is going to be some huge theatrical success. It’s more in the European style, and Americans don’t necessarily flock to those kinds of films.
However, the film being accepted at Toronto was very exciting to me on a personal level. My involvement with the film industry is a long story. I was involved in a film made here in St. Louis in the 1990s that we sold to Lion’s Gate. I won’t even say “we”; I was just the first person brought in on this short film that ending up being a feature film that was eventually sold. I watched the process and hung out in Hollywood and looked for my way in. There’s this huge disconnect between talent and hard work on one hand, and any kind of financial stability whatsoever on the other.
That’s the Midwesterner in you talking right there.
You’re right! When I got out there, there’s a very clear ceiling on whatever you want to do. “Get in line. Maybe the wind will blow and pick you up, but it’s really outside your control.” So I was really turned off by the film industry and the way it worked when I was in my 20s, but I thought that if I could find my own way in, to operate on my own terms, I wanted to do it.
I think that’s what’s happening, the fruition of that dream. Living in St. Louis, being an executive producer, and getting a film into competition at Sundance, getting a film into South by Southwest that sold in two hours, and getting a film into Toronto is just amazing. What didn’t I hit in North America? Tribeca, I guess, but that was enough. [Laughs.] The film Some Beasts is becoming a sleeper hit, it’s taking the second-tier film festival circuit by storm. It had a double premiere in Dallas and Nashville, two very well-respected, second-tier festivals. At Dallas it won the Narrative Feature Special Jury Prize in Cinematography and at Nashville it was nominated for the New Directors Grand Jury Prize. The director Cameron Bruce Nelson was accepted to the Independent Filmmaker Project Labs, and so it’s going to be screening in New York. It won the 2013 Austin Film Society Grant during filming. So it’s become a well-respected film, and the kind of people that like these kinds of films are going to find it and just love it.
I can appreciate the notion of becoming involved in the film industry on your own terms. There’s this fanciful, perhaps cynical notion of the film industry as siren song, one that can compel people—creative and business professionals alike—to light out for the coasts in search of fortune. However, five successful features into your life as a film producer, you’re still a St. Louisan. Can you talk about what has motivated your decision to remain here?
Number one, my family and my wife’s family are here, and we have roots here. When you’re 38, it adds an extra layer of difficulty to leave, because you don’t want to leave the people you love. The other thing is that I now have three kids under five years of age, and St. Louis is one of the best places to raise a family. We’ve got excellent schools and cheap real estate. And then I have my businesses. [Supply-chain management firm] Executive Data Control's facility is in Springfield, and all my business infrastructure is here in Missouri. Also, being an alum of Washington University and the Olin School of Business gives me a local network that I’m passionate about.
Right now I have the luxury of playing this film game from the sidelines. If I needed to feed my family on this game, then… whew. What’s that saying about desperate measures? There’s a lot of bad media out there. It’s not like I need to make films or I will die. It’s more like I need to make great films, or I won’t have lived the life I wished I had.
If you just want to do financing, then you can just be completely standoffish. If you’re available, however, this industry will just suck your time right up. I just cranked out five films in 18 months. So I think I’m going to slow down a little bit. I just signed up with Clay Tweel and Stephen Klein on what will be my next project. It’s untitled at the moment, and it’s probably going to be a 2017 release. It’s about two identical twins living in Omaha. And if you know anything about Omaha, you know it’s a lot like St. Louis. It has a condensed poverty, largely African-American community and then an extremely wealthy Ladue-Clayton area, if you will. These really well-off neighborhoods and individuals said, “This has got to stop. Let’s remove money as an obstacle. Let’s get mentors, education, and whatever is possible for these kids.” But even with all this money, they can only pick twelve kids for the program. One of these identical twins was very optimistic about the future, and one wasn’t. And so one got into this program, and one didn’t. One of these kids has the red carpet rolled out for him to take him out of condensed poverty. Both kids are taking the avenues available to them, but the kid on the red carpet is having to separate himself from his family, his roots, his peers, everything he was told, all of which are being questioned by a community that he’s not really a part of.
You’ve mentioned your Great Film Test as a key component of your decision-making: Return on investment aside, you should be able to look your wife in the eye and honestly say that you helped make a great film. In criticism, that adjective, “great,” specifically refers to a kind of overall excellence that is allegedly self-evident but ultimately highly subjective. What, in your mind, makes a film great?
Wow, that’s a great question. I’m just going to say it’s subjective. I’m looking at a documentary film right now: It’s interesting, it’s an all-star crew, and the director and producer both have numerous laurels. The subject matter is well-known, so there’s a market for it. I know it’s going to be an extremely well-made film. But…I’m struggling. I thought that maybe I should do it, but I pushed it off to revisit in a month, because it doesn’t necessarily resonate with me. I think it's going to be an airtight, extremely well-executed film. It’s going to give people insight into an important topic. But there’s something about it that doesn’t just resonate with me on some level. It may turn into something like Finders Keepers, where I gently pass on it. Yet it's almost the opposite of Finders Keepers. With that film, I thought it was so bizarre and outlandish, almost like folklore. I thought that there was, pardon my French, no f__ing way that this was going to be made into a good movie, it was too crazy and too exploitative. This other film I'm currently looking it is the opposite. I have great confidence that it’s going to do well financially, probably critically, but it’s just not necessarily lining up for me.
It just doesn't have that x-factor.
I’m trying to find the right word for that variable, and I don’t know that I can hammer it down. On the one hand, I want to say “beauty,” but then you look at Finders Keepers, and that’s not the word I would use. [Laughs.] That movie is just sort of jaw-dropping. It’s an emotional roller coaster, but in a very hilarious and novel way that’s quite different from most dramatic narratives.
What about becoming more involved on the creative side of things? Is that one of your ambitions?
Yeah, that's kind of a dream. As I said, I think the next thing that’s going to happen is I’m going to slow down. I’m going to be involved with maybe another half dozen films in my current mode. After that, I think the next step for me is to move into a producer role. I get a lot of inspiration for someone like Chad Troutwine who started investing in films, and then he made his own, he made Freakonomics. He approached the authors and pitched crews to come together and make this film. And he did the same with Print the Legend. I’ve sort of built a network now where I could make a film that will get the eyeballs of the right people. The question is whether I can come up with the right idea. So I want to take some time, back up a little bit on my current role, and see if I can sort of reinvent. I don’t know if that will happen or not. I’ve pitched a few ideas and they’ve all been shot down. By people I trust. [Laughs.] And that’s okay. With a background in entrepreneurship, you know that you fail a lot and that’s what gets you to success. You take a lot of at-bats. So I see that as potentially the next move.
Finders Keepers will open at the Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema this Friday, October 2. Following the 7:10 p.m. show on October 2, there will be a Q&A with executive producer Walker Deibel. The film runs through October 7; click here for showtimes.
