Finders Keepers
In Finders Keepers, there are definite losers and weepers. Finders Keepers tells the story of a man’s amputated leg and the strange journey it took. Finders Keepers is one of mnay films opening this week, but it distinctly plays in an exclusive engagement at the Alamo Drafthouse Vintage Park.
John Wood was the scion of a wealthy family in a small town in North Carolina. Wood had his leg amputated after a plane accident in 2024, the same plane crash that ended the life of his father. Wood kept the leg and goodness knows we have all kept teeth after we lose them.
Wood took the leg worship a step further if you will excuse the pun. Wood preserved his amputated leg by wrapping it in screen mesh, injecting it with embalming fluid and hanging it in a tree. Eventually Wood stored the leg in a portable grill, like the one found in any given backyard.
Several years pass and Wood has the grill in a storage unit. Wood fails to pay the bill and the contents of the unit are auctioned off. Enter Shannon Whisnant a self-professed hillbilly, the winner of the auction. Suffice to say that Whisnant is as surprised as one can imagine when he discovers the actual content of his newly purchased booty.
Finders Keepers unwinds with a comedic sense of who these men are. One wants to profit by putting the limb on display and charging for the pleasure of seeing some guy’s leg. The other is trying to get off drugs, which led to his losing his possessions, and sue to retain his former appendage. The filmmakers show the true personas of Wood and Whisnant without editorializing on their downhome lifestyles. These men are what they are.
Even after the court case is resolved we still have an act of Wood’s life to unfold.
— Michael Bergeron
