Butler's Cinema Scene

John Wood

“FINDERS KEEPERS” My rating: B

82 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Finders Keepers” is a sort of hillbilly epic about an amputated human leg.

For starters.

In 2004 John Wood of Maiden NC lost his left leg — and his father, Tom — in the crash of their private plane.  Wood asked the hospital where he was treated to let him have his severed limb.  He hoped someday to be buried with it.

He expected to receive bones.  Instead Wood was given the whole leg, decaying flesh and all.

Initially Wood stored it in the freezer of the local Hardee’s (a friend worked there). After the manager threw a snit fit Wood soaked the limb in formaldehyde and hung it from a tree to dry.

But John had a drinking and drug problem. Before relocating to another state he moved his possessions into a storage facility. When he failed to pay the rent his belongings were sold at auction.

Enter Shannon Whisnant, a bombastic, barrel-bodied, bullfrog-voiced good ol’ boy who made a living buying junk cheap and selling it dear. Whisnant purchased and took home Wood’s small barbecue smoker. When he looked inside he discovered not the residue of old ribs but a human leg.

And there Whisnant saw a glorious future. This boondock Barnum would charge folks $3 ($1 for children) to view the limb. He printed up T shirts declaring him The Foot Man.

Meanwhile, between benders John Wood  argued that this was his flesh and bone, after all. He wanted nothing to do with what one observer of the feud describes as “fuckery and shenanigans.”

Shannon Wisnant

Their battle for possession of the leg would eventually be settled in the reality TV courtroom of Judge Greg Mathis.

At first glance Bryan Cranberry and Clay Tweel’s documentary appears to be a savage sendup of redneck ethos. But “Finders Keepers” takes individuals who at first glimpse seem stupid and silly and recognizes the tragedy in their lives.

For the more you dig into Wood and Whisnant’s back stories, the more complex things become.

Wood was the black sheep son of a prominent small-town businessman; Whisnant hailed from the wrong side of the tracks.

Always something of a screwup, Wood developed a post-crash addiction to painkillers; his lies and thievery alienated him from his family.  Also, as the co-pilot on that fatal flight, he felt responsible for his father’s death.

Meantime his widowed mother, Peg — possibly the least sentimental person in the state (she deserves her own documentary) — found herself free of a husband who had always treated her as an employee.  She never held a funeral and kept her spouse’s ashes in the cheap cardboard box provided by the mortuary,  much to the horror of her two daughters.

Whisnant had his own demons.He appears to have been an abused child. As his long-suffering wife puts it, “He likes the recognition and fame that comes from finding the leg in the smoker.”  Whisnant dreams of being on television; his vanity license plate reads: FTSMOKER.

“Finders Keepers” has some big laughs, certainly.  But it is also filled with poignant moments as we see beyond the yahoo-ism to find real people struggling with real problems.

Go to laugh. Walk away having learned something about the human condition.

| Robert W. Butler