Finders Keepers

Finders Keepers is the best comedy of tragic idiots that the Coen brothers never had the chance to make. It's certainly not the most important documentary of the year, and it might not end up being the best, but it'll most likely be the most entertaining. Though even while it makes you laugh from the farcical nature of the situation, there's a thoughtful social commentary that studies many harsh aspects of the human condition.

In a horrific plane crash that took his father's life, John Wood's leg was amputated, and in a very unorthodox request John asked to keep his limb to shred it to the bone and use it for a memorial for his father. John went through the long process of preserving it and keeping it safe in a grill only to lose that grill with the leg inside as he got behind storage locker payments where he kept both.

Amateur entrepreneur and all-round hustler Shannon Whisnant happened to purchase that storage locker and refused to give the leg back to John despite polite and reasonable requests. With all the attention, he sees it as an opportunity to make his millions using it as a tourist attraction and even invites John on the deal. When an agreement is not settled, it's taken to be one of the most unique legal battles the courts have ever seen. Can one really buy someone else's body parts?

Most everyone else in the documentary finds the situation bafflingly bizarre including John, and it's hilarious, though interesting to see what the foot means to these various people. Any reaction you have is reflected in a ideally sourced clip from the media. If it weren't for solid proof it happened, you'd think it was a perfectly scripted mockumentary. Much of the men's conflict is shown on television, both in candid media appearances and on televised courtrooms. In the world of Finders Keepers – television caused, provoked and then solves their problems.

While John has his own human interest story, the source of the bizarre conflict is from Shannon's lifetime ambition to be an everyday television personality, despite how absolutely unlikely it is. There's a deep undercurrent of bittersweetness in how the dreams of fame and fortune can cloud someone and drive them to such madness, even though it's so utterly far from their grasp. The genius of the film is that it studies Shannon eventually tasting it, and ironically through the film itself, and it rings painfully true in the absurdity of those ambitions that we can all admit to at some times.

The film certainly does paint Shannon as the bad guy but John is no saint. He's a drug addict and throughout most of the film's chronology of events, it's pointed out that he's high, something that tears his family apart. They're both such efficiently funny characters in their outlandish statements that they don't have to try, but they're also deeply poignant in their human flaws. The direction from J. Clay Tweel and Bryan Carberry compliments both sides, balancing our sympathies.

However, the filmmakers don't catch up to date with our subjects until about an hour into the film when the drama is seemingly resolved. Fortunately, it has more personal reconciliation to explore and that's where the film finds its most compelling moments as the people we've been following find some hope beyond the foot. The Coens would not have offered such satisfying resolutions so it's a treat to have this stranger than fiction story in this tightly constructed documentary form that breezes by with equal substance.

8/10

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Shannon Whisnant purchased a grill at an auction. Inside the grill was an amputated leg. What follows is a story centered on the enterprising Whisnant and John Wood, the man whose leg wound up in the grill due to an odd chain of events.

This story, by itself, is quite interesting because of the events and people involved. Shannon Whisnant is clearly crazy, with delusions of grandeur. He does not seem stupid, but clearly feels he has been slighted by the world and should be someone important. John Wood, on the other hand, is generally portrayed as the victim, but he has his own problems and from what we see in the film, he seems to have more or less thrown away a golden ticket.

A little bit deeper, there are two issues I would love to have seen more of: one, why did the doctors let Wood keep his leg? I feel like there are some biohazard issues with letting people keep rotting flesh, and the film never really got into that.

And two, I wish the issue would have gone through actual legal channels. There are some excellent legal questions involved: does the leg belong to the person who found it, just as money in a mattress would? Or is it clearly something different because it is human remains -- can you actually own part of another man? This could have been fascinating to see argued in court, but that never happens.

We often see on internet news websites little bits and snips of "weird news", things that seem too bizarre, too inexplicable to be real. The story of John Wood and Shannon Whisnant is one of these stories. Through this documentary, we get a rare glimpse into the lives of the people behind the strange and altogether unlikely series of events that brought two very different men from Carolina together in a battle over, of all things, an amputated leg.

John Wood lost his leg in a fatal plane crash that saw the father he loved, Tom, die. Already a troubled man, the trauma of the crash sent him over the edge, with drug abuse and alienation from his family causing him to enter into a downward spiral. Eventually, everything he owned ended up in a storage unit. Desperate for something to have to reconcile with the event, he took claim of his own amputated limb, and eventually preserved it through a bit of backwoods mummification. It was among the possessions in the shed that was eventually sold to a wheeling-dealing haggler named Shannon Whisnant. Discovering the foot in an old grill, Shannon claimed ownership of the foot after it was discovered to be a medically amputated limb. John wanted it back. The ensuing media attention to the story would change the lives of both men, though to the public at large, it was just another story of Southern-fried strangeness and backwoods idiocy.

Starting with the story of the leg itself, the strange set of circumstances which saw it amputated from its owner and its backwoods method of mummification, the documentary then transitions into the story of the battle over the severed leg, before examining the lives of two men who are, at their core, damaged in more ways than just physical scars and amputated appendages. John, a recovering addict who desperately sought the approval and love of his parents. Shannon, physically abused by his father, like many people in the age of reality television and internet broadcasting desperately seeks fame and recognition.

Although it is an easy trap for many to focus solely on the lurid details of the leg and the battle for it that ensued shortly thereafter, the documentary succeeds in telling a story that you aren't likely to see on reality TV or the internet, examining the lives of both men in an ultimately sympathetic way. About the only fault that can be said for the film is that, while the story is interesting, the documentary becomes thoroughly average. Neither terrible nor exemplary, it succeeds at telling its story from a new and refreshing angle, but the tale it tells is simply not one that is overwhelmingly engrossing. It's competent, and it does an excellent job of taking a look at its subjects in a way that no one prior had even bothered to attempt. But there is only so much story you can get out of the struggle over a severed foot. That and perhaps it is a little too lenient in its examination of the exploitation of these two men by a news and entertainment media that was clearly interested only in the bloody details.

Finders Keepers was warmly received at the SXSW Film Festival. It is one of those stories which prove that truth is almost always much stranger than fiction. There are many true stories – like this one – which no one would believe if you wrote them as fiction.

In this bizarre tale of how John Wood's amputated leg is accidentally sold at auction to Shannon Whisnant who has the screwball idea of making money by displaying it as some sort of macabre tourist attraction. The film actually uses this strange incident as an opportunity to explore the severely dysfunctional lives of both men and their families. Wood is a drug addict still dealing with the grief of losing his father in the same plane crash that cost him his leg. Whisnant appears to be some sort of unhappy narcissist who sees the purchase of an amputated leg as his ticket to the fame and fortune that has long eluded him thus far in his rather mundane life

The film makers take this material and while gently mocking the men's eccentricities also allows them to share their complicated stories. The film may even serve as a partial catharsis for them. Finders Keepers is hilarious. The filmmakers keep the story moving in a highly entertaining manner. Despite the entertainment component the emotions of the protagonists and their families are very real and their pain about the problems in their lives is also very real. Really the leg they are battling for becomes a strange metaphor for the aspects of themselves that are missing in both their lives. Finders Keepers walks the line between comedy and tragedy and does so delightfully. I had no idea what to expect when I walked into this film and I think I got a lot more than I expected.

On the surface, Finders Keepers is an odd and funny look into the lives of two interesting characters from North Carolina who fight over the ownership of a severed foot /leg. Although entertaining, this documentary is much more than just an out of the ordinary situation. The deeper we get into the background of the story and its characters, we witness a struggle for fame, forgiveness and family. Issues of drug addiction and childhood trauma appear as we see a deeper story that deals with regrets and poor decisions that have created a major journey that both characters travel through. An uplifting ending helps bring closure where it is much needed. Still, the odd scenario which Finders Keepers showcase, may not find a larger audience that this documentary deserves.