When his amputated leg is discovered in a grill sold at a North Carolina auction, John Wood finds himself at the center of a worldwide media frenzy. Believing the new-found attention to be his chance at doing some great things in an otherwise disappointing, wayward life, he's quickly swept up in the hysteria as the leg's enterprising buyer, Shannon Whisnant, then sues to regain its custody. But the stranger-than-fiction chain of events, fueling John’s drug addiction and compounded by generations of his familial dysfunction, soon sets John on the streets and heading to his certain demise. Just in time, however, another twist in these fantastical occurrences gives John a final shot at becoming whole for the first time in his life.
Director's Statement
Years ago our producer pitched us the idea of doing a documentary on a story he'd seen on the news: a man had found a severed human leg in a grill he bought at an auction, and had then wanted to keep the limb, embroiling him -- and the leg's biological, one-legged owner -- in a custody battle over it. We had a good laugh, then wondered how this tabloid-ready, stranger-than-fiction event could possibly fill out a feature-length film.
In traveling across the country to beautiful North Carolina and meeting these same outlandish characters we'd seen hollering on CNN, "Urban Legends," and "World's Dumbest Hillbillies," we soon realized how much more lay beneath the surface of this 15-minutes-of-fame occurrence. After interviewing -- and befriending -- these characters, we quickly discovered them to be very real people with very relatable hopes, dreams, and hurts, who fate just so happened to place in a very specific -- and admittedly bizarre -- set of circumstances.
Over the years we've spent filming with them and sifting through our footage and the archival material, we've joked that "Finders Keepers" needs to be at least a mini-series to truly get to the bottom of this labyrinthine, polyphonic tale of tragedies, good fortunes, and generations-deep grievances, and that's not far off. But it's our hope that viewers, after experiencing our severely abridged telling of this tale, will at least come to see these characters as the real-life, multifaceted people they are -- just as we did while filming them.