FINDERS KEEPERS (Bryan Carberry, J. Clay Tweel). 82 minutes. Opens Friday (October 2). Rating: NNNN
Where to watch: iTunes
A hit at Hot Docs earlier this year, Finders Keepers takes the ludicrous true-life story of two North Carolina men fighting over possession of a mummified leg and slowly unpacks it to find genuine pathos and sorrow.
John Wood lost his left leg in the plane crash that killed his father, and wanted to keep it as a sort of memorial to that day – but his subsequent OxyContin addiction, combined with his irresponsible personality, led to its being abandoned in a storage locker along with the rest of his possessions.
The contents of the locker were purchased at auction by Shannon Whisnant, a self-styled entrepreneur who saw the leg as his ticket to fame and fortune. (He wanted to charge adults $3 to look at it, kids $1.) Wood managed to regain possession of the leg, but Whisnant sued him to get it back. And the local media was there for all of it.
Bryan Carberry and Clay Tweel treat the story as a tale of competing obsessions – Wood needs to find peace by literally owning his loss, and Whisnant can’t imagine a world where he isn’t “the foot man” – and avoid caricature whenever possible. Though Whisnant makes that awfully difficult.