Henry Kathman

Goncharov’s Genius [First Draft]

Added 2022-11-24 18:04:22 +0000 UTC

Hey everyone, this past weekend I was inspired to write a little something about the 1973 film Goncharov. I don't want to rush out a video version of this essay, but I will be trying to work to get this out as soon as possible. But until then, please enjoy the first draft of my script about the Genius of Goncharov.

“Rome is stately and impressive; Florence is all beauty and enchantment; Genoa is picturesque; Venice is a dream city; but Naples is simply — fascinating.” - Lilian Whiting

[Montage of Goncharov “Shots”]

The hallowed streets of Naples can be considered some of the most historically active streets in human history. Appearing in historical records as early as the first Mycenaean Settlements, through the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, it’s rule under Norman conquest, to even being the first Italian city to rise against Nazi Occupation during World War Two; the story of Naples is a city that often finds itself evolving and adapting under each new wave brought by the tides of history. Though despite this adaptability, one thing Naples has failed to distance itself from is its long-entrenched history with organized crime, as it remains one of the largest remaining strongholds for the Camorra within all of Europe. Where other historical forces wash over the city, the Camorra find themselves feeling as constant as the walls of Parthenope. Within this contradictory history, Naples is a city that has long been a point of fascination for storytellers, though few have produced a narrative as compelling as the story behind Goncharov, the lost Martin Scorsese film saved from cinematic oblivion were it not for the strange discovery of a- well I’m getting ahead of myself.

For those unfamiliar, Goncharov is a 1973 film that follows the rising career of the Russian-born Camorra Clan leader, Lo Straniero Goncharov: who not only must navigate the dangerous life of the Neapolitan underworld but grapples with the rival worlds of his Russian heritage and his Italian livelihood, a struggle made manifest as Goncharov’s loyalty and affection is pulled between his wife Katya and his brother in arms Andrey Daddano. While critics at the time dismissed it for being overly ambitious, it is because of that ambition that nearly 50 years later modern audiences find themselves enamored with characters like Mario Ambrosini, Valery Michailov, and of course, Joseph “Ice Pick Joe” Morelli.

All of this is indicative of the precariousness of this film’s production, as well as the talent on display in Martin Scorcese as Producer and Matteo Di Sciocchezze as director and screenwriter. Scorsese had only completed the grueling 24 day filming of Boxcar Bertha when he was introduced to Sciocchezze by his producer Roger Corman. At the time, Scorsese was part of a group of talented young filmmakers that worked under Corman now known as the Movie Brats due to their passion for film as an artform, as well as a reputation for bucking against the now stagnant expectations found in Hollywood at the time. When Scorcese heard that his close friend and fellow movie brat Francis Ford Coppola had signed a deal with Paramount to adapt Mario Cuzo’s bestselling novel The Godfather, it was Corman who had suggested that Scorcese follow Coppola’s lead in directing a Mafia film using Sciochezze’s script. Though after some difficulties securing the proper visas to film in Naples, Scorcese had to step away from directing the film, compelling Sciocchezze to bring his script to life as director with the assistance of Scorcese as producer.

Part of what makes this such a fascinating film from a production standpoint is the way that it reflects the ethos of filmmakers like Scorcese and Sciocchezze amongst the early days of what would later be remembered as ‘New Hollywood’. Today, news that a film was changing directors mid-production would be seen as catastrophic to audiences faith in the movie’s quality, but in the days of Goncharov, the Movie Brats were defined by a sense of collaboration, as later seen when George Lucas helped Coppola film the Mattress sequence in The Godfather, when Brian De Palma helped to rewrite the opening text crawl of Star Wars, or when Scorcese himself would later seek input from Steven Speilberg when he filmed Taxi Driver. As such, when watching Goncharov, it is easy to see the ways that Sciocchezze’s filmmaking was heavily influenced by Scorcese’s style to the point where you will still see people misattribute Scorcese as the director of this film.

Though despite that collaborative nature, we can still see that this is thoroughly Sciocchezze’s story to tell, as best demonstrated by the relationship of Andrei and Goncharov, as well as Katya and Sophia. Many modern queer film scholars look to Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel’s performances as a pivotal display of homoerotic affection in a time when Italy was facing its first slew of public queer protests and the formation of Fuori, the first LGBTQ organization in post fascist Italy. While Scorcese and Sciocchezze have both been quite open about not intending any queer subtext within these characters, it’s hard to ignore how Sciocchezze’s history as a closeted bisexual man might have manifested within the film’s themes of tradition versus adaptability. Just as Goncharov is brought down by his unwillingness to abandon the familiarity found within his Russian heritage and marriage to Katya, it was Schiochezze’s unwillingness to fully abandon the heteronormative expectations of his upbringing that almost caused him to never complete the film, and is widely considered one of the reason that Goncharov has been so difficult to find until recently.

In addition to Scorcese, Goncharov had a second producer in Domenico Procacci, who helped to provide additional funding for the film once Scorcese was unable to join the filming in the summer of 1972, and the two would begin an affair shortafter. Because Sciocchezze was an up and coming director and Procacci was married at the time, the two had attempted to keep their relationship a secret. Though because of the film’s critical portrayal of the Camorra, there would be a concerted effort from the Chmerkovskiy clan to discredit the director and prevent the film’s international release. This would lead them to publishing rumors of the affair in Naples newspapers like Il Mattino and Roma while the film was completing production, causing Corman’s company New World Pictures to greatly reduce Goncharov’s budget and distribution plans, two things that would already be detrimental to any film’s success, least of all a nearly three hour international epic whose story has the audience rapidly jumping between Naples, St. Petersberg, and Pompeii in such quick succession.

In watching the film today, after Scorcese has maintained a reputation for championing smaller film productions and the preservation of movie history, it is interesting that so few people talk about Goncharov within the context of Scorcese’s filmography or New Hollywood. Perhaps it is because of Matteo Di Sciocchezze changing his name to Matteo JWHJ 0715 as a rejection of his homophobic family and Italian heritage, maybe it is a testement of the Camorra’s continued influence within Naples, perhaps it is an indictment against the Movie Brats, that for all of the praise leveled at them for innovating the film industry, they were still apprehensive of closely associating the groups outside of the heteronormative white spaces that defined this generation of filmmakers. Or perhaps, this is because Goncharov was a product of Tumblr looking at a pair of boots and deciding to make up a fake Scorcese film. [Film Tear]

[I step in front of my Green Screen wearing a ‘This idiot hasn’t seen Goncharov’ t shirt]

Hello everyone, Henry here, I wanted to step out here to just to make sure this is as explicit as possible. What you had just watched up to this point was an elaborate lie. There was never a movie called Goncharov made in 1973. There was never a director named Matteo Di Sciocchezze or Matteo JWHJ 0715. While Martin Scorsese did direct a gangster movie in 1973 starring Harvey Keitel and Rober De Niro, that movie was 1973’s Mean Streets, a film that has gone on to be one of the most influential movies of its time period, not only beginning Scorceses life long collaborative partnership with De Niro, but helping to propelling him to becoming one of the most respected perspective within the film industry. By now, many of you will have already been familiar with the Goncharov phenomena, but in the off chance that this is your first time hearing about this: first off, sorry for what must have been a surreal 8 minutes, but secondly, was there a point when you began to doubt this story? If so, when was it? Was it when I talked about the film’s premise and characters, when I included footage that looked out of place, when I went into its production history, or when I added the story of Sciocchezze affair or his name change? Moreover, how much of this story do you think was a lie? 30%? 50%? 70%? Because I did make a point of including actual facts about Naples, Scorsese, Italian Queer history, and New Hollywood all to help better sell this story of a movie that doesn’t exist. While this might seem like a silly thought exercise about a fake movie, these questions are what actually compelled me to analyze Goncharov, and what I want to talk about.

That’s right, you thought we were done with the analysis just because this movie doesn’t actually exist? Oh no, I’m just getting started here, I had to scrub through like 30 different movies just to get enough fake footage for this goddamn movie, so we’re going to talk about this, motherfuckerrrr-

Actual Goncharov Analysis Time

On October 25th, 2020, artist Marisa BeBeau published fan art of Adventure Time on her Tumblr Blog, which depicted an original character named Nico, a Catboy that would join series protagonist Finn on adventures; eventually starting a romantic relationship and getting married. Nico’s creation was spurred on after the user ‘webbedsite’ jokingly asked Bebeau to give Finn a Catboy boyfriend. Like most other original characters created in these fandom spaces, Bebeau would iterate and expand upon Nico as a character, creating storyboards and fan art that depicted Nico’s interactions with the wider cast of the series. but a strange thing began to occur as Bebeau received dozens of messages from users that believed that Nico was a real character. It got to the point that she had a folder of hundreds of screenshots of these messages, enough for her to eventually compile her experiences into a Zine that I highly recommend.

Earlier that year in August, a similar phenomenon was seen on Tik Tok when elementary school teacher Emily Jacobsen uploaded an ode to the character Remy from the 2008 Brad Bird film Ratatouille. Jacobsen’s music would then be given an arranged score by another user Daniel Mertzlufft, which would then be iterated upon by hundreds of users, creating new scenes, writing songs, creating choreography, and even designing multiple sets and costumes. All culminated in December of 2020 when Ratatouille the Musical was staged as a benefit concert with the collaboration of the original Tik Tok creators like Jacobsen and Mertzlufft and Broadway directors and actors like Lucy Moss and Titus Burgess, which would go on to raise $2 Million for the Entertainment Community Fund and gain 350,000 viewers in its initial livestream.

Amidst the two creations, on August 15th, 2020, Tumblr user ‘zootycoon’ would upload an image of a pair of bootleg boots labeled with a tag describing Goncharov “The Greatest Mafia Movie Ever Made”. Amidst Zootycoon’s confusion over the strange label, a user called ‘abandonedambition’ gave a response that would inadvertently cause Goncharov to follow in the footsteps of Nico the Catboy and Ratatouille the Musical: “this idiot hasn’t seen goncharov”. The post would gain a decent level of popularity from this response, and would be added to Tumblr canon. Unlike other social media websites like Twitter, Instagram, and Tik Tok, the ecosystem of Tumblr is not fully driven by algorithmic engagement but instead by users resharing other user’s posts to their followers. This creates an environment where if you can find it, any post has the potential to still go viral even years after its original posting, allowing certain posts to gain a reputation with the user base. Just tell a tumblr user, “Do you love the color of the sky” or “I like your shoelaces” and you’ll see what I mean. But because Goncharov was able to persist for the following two years, “this idiot hasn’t seen goncharov” was added to Tumblr canon and would spur users to pretend to be Goncharov experts.

All of this was accelerated on November 18th, 2022, when user ‘beelzeebub’ created a fake poster for Goncharov. And in a “yes and” environment like Tumblr, other users would add onto beelzeebub’s joke by creating fan art, fake movie reviews, excerpts from academic papers analyzing the film, fan fictions, and also mimicking the discourse and discussions that can be seen in other modern fandoms, as users speculate on the film’s queer undertones, the ways it reinforces Cold War-era perceptions of Russian people, and analyzing the tragedy of characters like Ice Pick Joe wishing to leave the cycles of violence and ultimately dooming himself in that pursuit and I feel the need to say once again that this is all about a movie that does not actually exist, but you can see how the mechanism of Tumblr’s environment could cause something like this to escalate to the point where Goncharov has more published fan fics on Archive Of Our Own than James Cameron’s Avatar. All which beg the question; at what point does Goncharov cross over from total fabrication to reality?

When looking through the different posts analyzing the film, interesting patterns emerge as fans of Goncharov essentially role play as people living in a world where this movie exists; oftentimes using terms like ‘out of character’ or ‘breaking Kayfabe’ whenever discussing Goncharov in the context of the fake fandom. Similar to roleplaying games, professional wrestling, and improv comedy, much of the story telling of Goncharov is defined by a fan’s desire for their ideas to be believable within the framework established by other fanworks. If someone was to describe a scene where Goncharov climbs on a velociraptor and fights Optimus Prime, even though it has just as much of a basis in canon as the other posts, no one is going to accept it as such because it distances itself too much from the consensus established by the rest of the community, effectively creating a canonical work of art out of nothing.

Then again, is that not what humans have been doing for thousands of years? So much of our myths and folktales have been established in similar ways across our history, where people will pass down stories to their audience, who will in turn pass those same stories down after changing it to suit the values and ideals of a new audience. It is a phenomenon that was observed in Walter Benjamin’s essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, which posited “The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being embedded in the fabric of tradition.” We tend to think of the concept of canon as this set of insoluble truths that are established when a work of art is created, but in reality, such canon is more fluid than we realize. When people look at Venus De Milo’s broken form, it is widely seen as a symbol of feminine beauty, an interpretation that is as stone as the statue itself for some people. But as Benjamin points out, “An ancient statue of Venus, for example, stood in a different traditional context with the Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol.” This evolution in canon can be seen across culture: Darth Vader is Luke’s Father, Romeo and Juliet were star crossed lovers, American Gothic shows a man and wife in front of a house. But this often ignores the ways that we only came to those conclusions through multiple iterations and changes made to a work by the artist or the audience. The twist with Darth Vader was only explicitly established on George Lucas’s second draft of The Empire Strikes Back. Before Shakespeare, the star crossed lovers were named Romius and Juliet after being changed from Pyramus and Thisbe. Grant Wood intended the couple in American Gothic to be seen as father and his grown up daughter, even though he was painting his sister and his dentist. As Benjamin argues, humanity’s relationship with art and storytelling is predicated on taking the canon of old and adapting it to fit the values of the society it is brought into. Goncharov is simply a facsimile of that process being applied to the landscape of Tumblr and the wider internet, where the absence of an established canon causes people to seek one out for themselves, for better or worse.

Benjamin’s primary argument in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is how the perception of art had been changed to lose some of its meaning through mass media consumption, “for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility.” When Benjamin wrote this essay in 1935, this mechanical reproduction he spoke of was the invention of photography and film, but through a modern lens, we can see those same ideas demonstrated by the internet at a heavily accelerated pace. Through social media and streaming, the drive to continually present new information to audiences has caused the pace in which we engage with media to speed up to such a degree that it makes it difficult to think about a work on an individual level. There is always a pressure to move on to the newest thing as soon as possible, with the expectation that you will contribute to conversation even if you don’t have anything substantive to say, which in turn reward those who might take the most reactionary and polarized stance on the subject in order to stick out from the crowd and maintain the audience's attention for as humanly possible. In a system that prioritizes us viewing the world as simplistically as possible, the existence of Goncharov is a testament to the ways that fandoms are pushed into competition to see who can establish their version of canon first, which is how we get Martin Scorcese demonized by a subset of filmgoers for daring to criticize the MCU, how we are so entrenched in misinformation that some people are still convinced that Goncharov is real, how you have an increasingly larger swaths of film history that younger generations are never exposed to because streaming services don’t care about any movies made before 1985, or how you get YouTubers rushing out a video on a niche subject in the hopes of releasing it while it’s still trending. And I- [Stammers] I think I’ve become the sort of person Goncharov is satirizing... [I look around with a growing sense of frustration before I turn off the camera]

Finale

[fade into a shot of a snowy field, cut to close up to the Goncharov shirt, cut to shot of myself resembling Robert De Niro in The Godfather 2 striking a match and tossing it, cut back to the shirt being set ablaze with the match]

If it wasn’t apparent, there are a lot of potential things you can take from Goncharov as a fake piece of media and as a cultural phenomena. Like y'all this thing could have been so much longer you have no idea. But as easy it is to look upon this moment with cynicism and negativity, it is also important to look at the positives that have come out of this. As much as I am critical of the ways that social media can hinder our ability to examine art and other people with nuance and empathy, the internet also has allowed us to observe phenomena that previously took lifetimes to undergo in a matter of days. It also has demonstrated the positives that can come out of social media platforms like Tumblr, which I think was put best in this post by user ‘Anachronic-Cobra’,

“The Goncharov meme has exposed several really interesting things:

It highlights tumblr as actual social media based in community effort rather than status
It shows what tumblr as a whole values in media (in particular, queer representation, strong relationships between characters, emotional catharsis, and dichotomy of themes such as spending one's life building a legacy versus just living life)
Tumblr humor is based primarily in improv "yes and-ing" and commitment to the bit, and people will put 200% effort into pushing the bit even further if the bit keeps being fun
More than anything, people want to entertain each other, and being in a community that values entertaining others leads to incredible collaborative works of creativity that don't even feel like work to make”

In a time where so much of social media is defined by maintaining engagement through fear and provocation, it is important to remember the best of what we have to offer through these online communities. Because at the heart of everything discussed here, I have to believe that we are capable of doing amazing things when we aren’t shackled to the mindset of profit and engagement but instead collaboration and mutual understanding. And if that means obsessing over a made-up movie, well, to quote ‘Ice Pick Joe’ Morelli, "the past cannot be unfrozen, only chipped away bit by bit. If you do not carve your own path into the ice of what you've done, it will eventually melt and drown you" So here’s to carving that path together, and until next time.

Thank you for Watching, Best Wishes.

Sources

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Edited by Hannah Arendt. Translated by Harry Zohn, Schocken Book, 1969. https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf