Tumblr cinephiles have a new favorite
movie this week. It is decades old, so maybe you have already seen it. It is
called “Goncharov” and stars Robert DeNiro in the titular role as a Russian hit
man and former discothèque owner. It takes place in
Naples,
Italy. Cybill
Shepherd plays his wife, Katya, and rounding out the cast are Al Pacino, Gene
Hackman, and Harvey Keitel.
اضافة اعلان
The 1973 film, billed as “Martin Scorsese
presents,” has everything: murder, a love triangle, a striking original score,
and a dramatic final scene that film buffs have been debating for years.
There is one other thing to know about
“Goncharov.” It does not exist.
The story of Tumblr’s beloved fake film began
with a shoe. Several years ago, a Tumblr user posted a photo of a pair of
“knockoff boots” they ordered online that arrived with a strange tag. “The
greatest mafia movie ever made,” read the top line. “Martin Scorsese presents
GONCHAROV.” “Domenico Proccacci production,” it continued. “A film by Matteo
JWHJ0715.” “About the Naples Mafia,” read the final line. (The user’s Tumblr is
no longer active, and attempts to reach the user were unsuccessful.)
In August 2020, Aveline McEntire, a college
student in Missouri, reblogged the image on her personal Tumblr after seeing it
on a friend’s page.
McEntire added an additional image to her
reblog: a screenshot of a comment from a third Tumblr user, reading, “this
idiot hasn’t seen goncharov.” McEntire, 20, had not thought much about the post
until recently, when it suddenly started gaining popularity, with tens of thousands
of people beginning to reblog it earlier in November.
As of Monday evening, “Goncharov” was the No.
1 trending topic on the platform, with Scorsese taking the second spot. Pokémon
was in third.
Even Tumblr has gotten in on the act.
“Goncharov” was ahead of its time, “and it’s contribution to cinema is
remarkable,” the platform tweeted Sunday from its official account. “Rarely
does a film tell as many diverse-yet-interconnected stories. Hard to imagine so
few ppl have seen it.”
On Tumblr, users have created an entire
universe to support the idea that “Goncharov” is real. A poster for the film,
riddled with bullet holes and crediting Matteo JWHJ0715 as the director of the
“greatest mafia movie (n)ever made,” was created by Alex Korotchuk, a
20-year-old-artist in Prague, who said 50 people have placed orders to buy a
print version of the poster. Alix Latta, a 25-year-old music teacher in
Indiana, composed a theme song — a waltz inspired by the theme from “The
Godfather”.
There are Tumblr posts full of lore about the
film and vivid details about the plot, including stills and
GIFs pulled from
other films and TV shows being repurposed as scenes from “Goncharov”.
“It’s essentially a Russian gangster coming to
Naples, and it’s a long story about his eventual downfall and betrayal by
everyone in his life,” said Erika
Paulson, 27. “To quote one of the posts that’s been going around, it’s him
coming to Naples to try and escape his life of violence.”
Elena Asofsky, 23, initially fell for the
mythmaking. “I start asking my roommates. I’m like, ‘Hey, have you heard about
this ‘Goncharov’ thing? What is this? Can we get in on it?’ And my roommate’s
like, ‘I know; it’s fake. It’s all not real.’” Since then, Asofsky, a
substitute teacher and illustrator in Columbus,
Ohio, has been making fan art
inspired by the imaginary movie.
Paulson pointed out Tumblr users have a rich
history of this very particular brand of creativity, recalling how users
several years ago created a similarly real fandom for “Squiddles,” a fictional
TV show within the universe of the web comic “Homestuck.” But for some Tumblr
users, it can be frustrating to be on the outside of inside jokes when other
users refuse to cave and admit the thing they are talking about is not real.
How the
title “Goncharov” came to be on the boots’ tag in the first place continues to
be a mystery. Michael Littrell, a musician from Minneapolis, has a theory.
After seeing the boots floating around Tumblr for years, Littrell, who studied
journalism in college, started investigating in October and eventually came
across an Italian producer named Domenico Procacci (the same producer named by
the boots). From there, he connected the dots to a 2008 film called “Gomorrah,”
about Italian organized crime.
Scorsese
was not the director, but according to Littrell, 24, and a years-old story from
The Hollywood Reporter, “Gomorrah” had a presentation credit from the famed
director when it arrived in the United States.
A
poster Littrell found in his search reads “Martin Scorsese Presents” at the top
and is stylized much the same as the boots’ label, with Scorsese’s name in red
and the title of the film in capitalized black letters. The director of
“Gomorrah” is Matteo Garrone — who shares a first name with Matteo JWHJ0715.
A
tagline proclaims “Gomorrah” to be “BASED ON THE BEST SELLING EXPOSÉ BY ROBERTO
SAVIANO ABOUT THE NAPLES MAFIA” — details that bear a striking similarity to
the boots that started this whole saga.
“I
really want Scorsese to see this and maybe make Goncharov,” reads a reply on
Littrell’s Tumblr post documenting his findings.
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