{"id":1339,"date":"2015-10-08T14:27:25","date_gmt":"2015-10-08T18:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/culturated.com\/?p=1339"},"modified":"2015-10-08T14:43:47","modified_gmt":"2015-10-08T18:43:47","slug":"finders-keepers-documentary-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/culturated.com\/finders-keepers-documentary-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Finders Keepers Documentary Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finders Keepers<\/em><\/a> is easily among the oddest, saddest and most hysterical documentaries I’ve ever seen. Is it a tragedy? A farce? A mystery? A Flannery O’Connor-style character study of rural Americana? It’s all of these things and more thanks to the deft direction of Bryan Carberry and J. Clay Tweel.<\/p>\n

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The film opens with middle-aged protagonist John Wood walking towards a mini-storage facility in Maiden, North Carolina. It was there, in Unit 48, that Wood stashed the majority of his worldly possessions in the summer of 2005 after he was evicted from his house for failure to pay his rent.<\/p>\n

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We soon learn that Wood lost his leg in a private plane crash that took the life of his father in 2004, and subsequently developed a crippling addiction to painkillers. Wood decided to keep\u00a0the amputated leg for personal reasons, used embalming fluid to preserve it, and stashed the mummified leg inside a BBQ smoker\u00a0inside the storage unit.<\/p>\n

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\"Finders<\/a><\/p>\n

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When Wood failed to pay the facility’s fees, the entire contents of his locker went to auction, and the grill (and the leg inside it) was sold to winning bidder Shannon Whisnant, who calls himself a “flea market entrepreneur.” \u00a0Whisnant comes across as a country-fied Donald Trump\u2013 a blustery blowhard so full of an inflated sense of self-importance that he fails to realize his\u00a0astounding level of asshat-ery.<\/p>\n

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Whisnant, a slick talker who claims he could sell ice to an Eskimo, acknowledges a lifelong desire to be famous and sees his good “finders keepers” fortune as a sign that it’s his time to shine. He decides to turn the foot into a bone-a-fide tourist attraction, charging $3 for adults and $1 for children who\u00a0want to take a peek at the petrified podiatry.<\/p>\n

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When Wood reveals himself as the foot’s rightful owner, Whisnant refuses to capitulate. Instead, he creates a website and TV ad to promote the outrageous attraction, sells t-shirts that say “I’m Friends With the Foot Man” and gets a “FTSMOKER1” vanity license plate. The bizarro foot feud between the duo brings them regional, national and eventually international media attention, \u00a0with a German talk show even flying them over to debate their claims on television.<\/p>\n

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