This is a containment breach. It’s the phrase commonly used by those who use the microblogging and social networking website Tumblr.com, when a meme, trend or sensation escapes the confines of what is usually a very insular space and ends up on other platforms or, God forbid, journalistic media. It can indicate when the fun is over, when the joke is tired and is usually answered with horrified expressions. But to anyone who uses Tumblr and comes across this article, consider this a love letter from a power user, because while people are witnessing the phenomenon that has happened or is still happening, few have discussed or analyzed how it all comes together, and why it’s so great.
That said, let’s talk about the time Tumblr made a Martin Scorsese film.
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Goncharov (1973) is a historical epic, post-war mob film directed by Scorsese and starring robert de niro, Al Pacino and Hackman Gene. With the scale of The Godfather and male aggressiveness bordering on Shakespeare’s profound homoeroticism Coriolanusfollowing the titular Goncharov (De Niro), a Russian mob boss in Naples who has a strained relationship with his fiancée, Katya (Cybill Berger), and an incredibly complicated relationship with his partner, or rival, or old friend, Andrey (Harvey Keitel). There’s a litany of colorful secondary characters, a clock motif reflecting the inevitability of death, a TV Tropes page, hundreds of fan fiction on Archive of Our Own, and dozens of meta-analysis and fan art.
The only thing Goncharov does not have the actual movie.
Where does “Goncharov” come from?
It’s not a real movie. If you took a few minutes to really think about it, you would realize how unlikely it would be. Scorsese was just a rising star of a director in 1973, with average streets which comes out the same year and, while containing some of the same cast, is a small-scale crime drama set in Little Italy. He wouldn’t do the historical epics he would be known for until probably 1980 with angry bull. That is, if Scorsese was the one who directed it; people seem to be split on whether it’s him or an acclaimed director Matthew JWHJ 0715, whose mother was Italian and whose father, apparently, was a license plate. The tale of Goncharov begins, like any good Internet phenomenon, with a joke.
Tumblr user zootycoon buys a pair of counterfeit boots online in 2020. Instead of a mark on the tongue of the boot, it says “The Greatest Mafia Movie Ever Made. Martin Scorsese presents: Goncharov.” It doesn’t come out of nothing but a sloppy spelling of a 2008 Italian mob film that Scorsese helped bring to the United States titled Gomorrah, the name Goncharov being shared by Ivan Goncharov, a 19th-century Russian novelist. Of course, the obvious punchline, delivered by user abandonedambition in the replies, was: “That idiot didn’t see Goncharov.” Yes of course, Goncharov. You don’t know the movie Goncharov? It’s just the greatest mafia movie ever made.
The post resurfaced a few days ago, and user beelzeebub takes it a step further by creating a masterfully photographed poster that establishes some important points. The main cast, the names of the characters, the physical appearance of these characters (which are only the actors drawn from other films) and the slogan: Winter Comes To Naples.
It was everything the Tumblr community needed to provide the internet with days of entertainment and creativity. There are no strict rules and no one enforces them. It’s a big improvisational game, everyone says “Yes, and” with nothing on the table. Yeah, and there’s a character called Ice Pick Joe (Jon Cazale) which depicts the inevitable cycle of violence, which is also a fan favorite. Yes, and there’s another female character named Sofia who shares palpable romantic tension with Katya while having a conversation at a fruit stand. Yes, and someone says “The clock will strike for everyone, even for you, Goncharov.”
Everybody just got it
There is a comprehensive document on the Goncharov lore, which is incredibly well put together, but it’s almost useless. Whether things were added in jest or with absolute seriousness, those who added to the canon understood the mission. Each scene depicted could theoretically fit into a 2-3 hour mafia drama. Nobody releases ideas that are too modern or don’t make sense in the context of the story or in the time period it came out. The idea of a mid-Cold War noir gangster film already has so many tropes involved among those that already exist, such as The Godfather Parts 1 & 2, The French Connectionand Chinese district that rare images and images that are apparently of Goncharov are simply pulled from other movies the actors are in, scrapbooked together to look like a cohesive movie. Goncharov is De Niro as Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part 2Katya is Cybill Shepherd as Brooke Carter in finally love. We all know the tropes, character archetypes, style and symbolism needed to make Goncharov seem real, without actually being real. It has the sets and costumes of the 1940s, with the violence and undertones of the 1970s, and a modern fandom.
However, no one has written a fully cohesive plot summary for Goncharov. While the supporting cast has a lot of fanfare, Goncharov is actually the least developed character. Everything is implied, because no one proposes to do Goncharov, everyone involved is part of the Goncharov fandom. The collaborative fiction is that this is a long-lost film that recently resurfaced and caught the attention of moviegoers on Tumblr. The film, in this narrative, already exists, and all of the fans are unreliable narrators with totally subjective opinions.
It’s highly unlikely that a 1973 film would contain so much gay subtext on purpose, but that won’t stop people from shipping Katya and Sofia, or Goncharov and Andrey. As of this writing, there’s no real storyline for Goncharov, but that won’t stop people from making fan art or memes of quotes and metaphors that have hit them emotionally. There’s no trailer, no scenes, but there is a Gene Siskel review from 1973, modern reviews from Letterboxd, and of course, this classic Tumblr speech. It doesn’t really exist, so it’s free to be interpreted in any way possible.
As we all watch Twitter’s downfall under new management, this mass hallucination that Tumblr has brought to life reminds us of the silver linings of social media and the collaborative nature of fiction. Would have Goncharov be as good in reality as in our collective imagination, who knows? Is it a satire and modernization of film noir tropes, emphasizing the homogeneity of certain films released at the time, or just a meme? Will this article be immediately obsolete, even before it is published? All I can say for sure is that a joke and counterfeit boots somehow spurred musicians to write film music, artists to create fan-art, writers to create metafictional essays complete and people to create something out of nothing, and that’s definitely a bright spot.
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