But in the throes of addiction which began after the death of his father, Wood failed to keep up repayments on the storage unit and lost his leg as well as all of his other belongings. In 2007, Shannon Whisnant, a bargain hunter from small-town Maiden, North Carolina, picked up a BBQ smoker at auction. And so does Wood. Hell always go on to say, Will I ever have him over for dinner? A part of me just died. Were they both eager to participate in the documentary? Password must be at least 8 characters and contain: As part of your account, youll receive occasional updates and offers from New York, which you can opt out of anytime. Inside the unit was a smoker. September 22, 2015 Shannon Whisnant, a North Carolina salesman, bought an abandoned smoker grill at a storage auction, hoping to resell it for a few bucks. Technically, the body part in question is Wood's lower leg, lopped off a few inches below the knee, but "foot" somehow sounds funnier, even though, as Wood's mother notes, "the tale was born of tragedy.". Shannon Whisnant was in the documentary Finders Keepers recently. And that's kind of, for us, where things started to fill out, and we really started to feel like we had a feature film on our hands. Adam Hobbs. Kiss Paul Stanley Has 'Thoughts' About Parents Who Support Kids Gender Identities The painful quest to win back his leg, and Whisnants dogged insistence on keeping it for himself, helped Wood get and stay sober. And thats the safest place to put it., Finders Keepers, the Story of a Gnarled Leg and the Lives It Altered, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/movies/finders-keepers-the-story-of-a-gnarled-leg-and-the-lives-it-altered.html. Shannon Whisnant January 2, 1974 ~ November 12, 2016 (age 42) Service Details Guest Book / Condolences Send Flowers & Sympathy Gifts Photographs Obituary Service Details Shannon Whisnant, 42, of Stacy, originally of Hickory, NC, passed away Friday, November 11, 2016 at Carteret Health Care. The 2015 documentary Finders Keepers tellsthe story of John Wood and his efforts to reclaim the leghe lost in the Cessna plane crash that took his fathers life. I think what happened was, he saw that the local media took to the story so quickly, and it gave him this kind of sense of fame and sort of energy around being on camera that he so longed for. Turns out, hed just misplaced it. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. On Shannon Whisnant, the man who found the leg. Whisnant doesnt want to give it back. He called 911 and the police came to confiscate the leg. As we spent a lot of time around these characters, we were able to go back between comedy and tragedy., As for the fate of the leg itself, Tweel confesses to a little uncertainty over who should be its rightful owner. Trouble is, the original owner of the limb, John Wood, wanted it back. Article ImagePrior to the events of Finders Keepers, John Wood lived a fairly ordinary, albeit troubled, life in North Carolina. Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, "William V. Shannon, 61, Envoy Under Carter and a Times Writer", "William V. Shannon Dies at 61; Author and Former Ambassador", "United States Ambassador to Ireland - Nomination of William V. Shannon", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_V._Shannon&oldid=1131812187, 20th-century American non-fiction writers, Ambassadors of the United States to Ireland, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 5 January 2023, at 21:53. Afterward, Mr. Wood spiraled into drug and alcohol addiction. BC: Johns aware of that fact. This simultaneously sordid and silly yarn begins as the portrait of a sad and broken man who lost a body part, but it ends up being a story about finding oneself. In September of 2007, North Carolina entrepreneur Shannon Whisnant bought a used smoker grill at an auction; inside he found a partially-mummified human leg. Find contacts: direct phone number, email address, work experience. "It's. Hes fallen on hard times. With no way to store theleg, Wood first refrigerated it at a local Hardee's before saving it through his own mummification techniques. His gruesome discovery became. Both these men, as well as their families, have their own brand of eloquence. Arrangements: Munden F.H., Morehead City. It demonstrably is true Wood and Whisnant even appeared on episodes of Jerry Springer, Worlds Dumbest Hillbillies, and Judge Mathis, as well as featuring in numerous news reports. They signed on, no restrictions. There was a ton of great footage, hysterical footage, that they didnt use, of me.. And why in the world would anybody have their own amputated limb preserved for posterity? Doctors had to amputate Woods leg and his father did not survive. In their hands, this is much more than a stranger-than-fiction yarn about a severed leg. This is insane! we were like, Oh, yeah, I guess it kind of is.. An uplifting ending helps bring closure where it is much needed. Services will be announced later by the family. The film ends with Whisnant going on talk radio to announce his candidacy for President of the United States in the 2016 Presidential Election. Hes married to his wife, Leslie, now. But if youre someone who just needs more like Tiger King, Finders Keepers, which is available for free with Amazon Prime, is your next stop. Eight years is a long time to think about why youre fighting over a foot. I think tomorrow were having a screening at Lincoln Center, and I think both of them might be Skyping in for the Q&A. 2023 Cond Nast. Shannon Whisnant: I'm pretty smart. They decided to make a documentary. 1 Shannon Whisnant Retweeted Louis Before losing his leg, Wood struggled with an oxycontin dependency, which was only heightened during his grief and recovery period. Shannon Whisnant, 42, Stacy, died 11-12-2016. I used to hear the saying "finders keepers" quite much when I was a kid. They were even profiled on a show called Worlds Dumbest Hillbillies! But while the documentary certainly doesnt deny the gut-busting news-of-the-weird hook of this story one talking-head participant refers to the whole situation as fuckery and shenanigans its more interested in drawing connections between two sad characters who are haunted by distant or abusive fathers. Would you believe me if I told you the story gets even crazier as it goes along? A man who had bought a barbecue smoker at a storage unit auction popped it open at home, only to discover, resting on the grill, the remains of a gnarled human leg. 16 on a season of Worlds Dumbest Hillbillies) built the tension, and pinned the tabloid coverage as a villain. Things you buy through our links may earnVox Mediaa commission. I really appreciate it! With the film, Im able now to, even on a grander scale than I couldve ever thought, pay tribute to my father and pay homage to my family, Mr. Wood said. Facebook gives people the. The portly Whisnant can be a fast-talking salesman one minute, gruff and terse and bitter the next. At this point, it would be reasonable to assume that Whisnant would want nothing more to do with Woods leg. The Weirdest Documentaries to Watch After Tiger King, Tiger King Earned 34 Million Viewers in First 10 Days, Netflixs Tiger King True Story: What the Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin Documentary Didnt Tell You. John Wood, center. But Whisnant, who put a sign on the empty smoker. They tell me that I have the best business mind that they've ever seen. Terms of Service apply. Sadly in November 2016, almost two years after the documentary premiered at the January 2015 Sundance film festival Shannon Whisnant passed away after a heart attack. If the rest of the year keeps up at this pace, podcasting will be in a good creative place. On what inspired the directors to make the movie. They have also lived in Gastonia, NC. Wood came from money he was the son of a furniture mogul and according to Whisnant had a roller rink in his basement (just one of many bizarre details which are never mentioned again). But thats all prologue, in a sense. The band have become the very thing their critics accuse them of. But the film left him disappointed. Rounding up our favorite funny videos of the month. The discovery naturally raised a lot of questions: Whose foot was it? On the surface, Finders Keepers is an odd and funny look into the lives of two interesting characters from North Carolina who fight over the ownership of a severed foot /leg. Finders Keepers, a film by Clay Tweel, left, and Bryan Carberry, right, explores the feud between Mr. Wood and Shannon A. Whisnant, who found Mr. Wood's amputated leg. Skip to main content embalming of his leg to the amateur forensic veterinarian who eventually preserved it. Hes a great salesman, a P. T. Barnum type of figure. While the documentarians told Vogue in 2015 that generally speaking both Wood and Whisnant were happy with the doc, with Whisnants only complaint being that it was too short and he wasnt in it enough, larger than life Whisnant was less circumspect talking to the In The Mouth Of Dorkness Podcast. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google They put it in their freezer until the manager found it. According to the directors of Finders Keepers, Wood has stayed clean and he's married. Greg Warren dared to go where no comedian has gone before. Yeah, I saw it, a police officer admits when asked about the leg, recalling Mr. Whisnants 911 call in 2007 to report his plum nasty find. For a while it was stored in a golf bag in a North Carolina pro shop, with a Masters head cover over the toes. So Ed and then Clay and I just didnt know how this story was going to end. Shannon Whisnant. He also began petitioning the police to return the leg to him. The deeper we get into the background of the story and its characters, we witness a struggle for fame, forgiveness and family. Yet the hicks-at-loggerheads story that was propagated by a snickering news media (and that is grasped, sometimes uneasily, by the directors, Bryan Carberry and Clay Tweel) veils a deeper, more resonant tale of fathers and sons and wounded feelings. (Oh, but he will. His substance use was ongoing when a man named Shannon Whisnant discovered Wood's amputated leg in an old grill he'd purchased from a repossessed storage unit. Other than that, everybody thought it was fair and true. This would be the last time that Mr. Whisnant ever considered parting with his leg. And then I was shocked, months later, Im just playing it over and over again, and it meant nothing to me. His buddy worked at the mortuary so he borrowed some embalming fluid and did it himself at home. BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBRC) - April 27, 2023 marked 12 years since the devastating tornado outbreak in Alabama. Send us a tip using our anonymous form. My favorite thing I've heard as a reaction is Marion, John's sister she felt like she's been watching this story through a knothole in a fence, and she feels like we knocked the fence down for her. He and Lisa are still together but certainly having some rough patches. Finders Keepers begins in Maidan, North Carolina where local wheeler-dealer Shannon Whisnant buys a storage unit at auction containing a smoker. This interview has been condensed and edited. Shannon was born and raised in St . Carberry: Shannon had two notes. It becomes more touching, too. You can listen to Whisnant talking on the Film School Rejects In The Mouth Of Dorkness Podcast here. I guess Im a nobody. The foot might be a branding opportunity for him, but its also, we realize, a cosmic righting of the scales. The rest winds thoughtfully through family history, class, and the twin perils and enticements of drugs and celebrity. It could have been 10 stars instead of 8.8. How two filmmakers stumbled across a tabloid story over the battle for an amputated limb, John Wood (left) and Shannon A. Whisnant in 'Finders Keepers. There was definitely an awareness of what the media is capable of. So it goes for a film that manages to make a grotesque and often bleak situation hilarious. He'd had to have that leg amputated years earlier. At the end of 2007, Ed Cunningham, the onetime NFL footballer and documentary producer (he previously produced the Academy Awardwinning high school football documentary Undefeated and The King of Kong), overheard some people discussing the leg debacle. Where did you find these actors?. He wanted to keep the limb as a memento of sorts to his dad. Since the documentary made waves in 2015, both Wood and Whisnant have appeared in several urban legend TV episodes, and Wood has performed charity work at the Woodford Landfill in North Carolina as a recyclables organizer.