#get gonched idiot

[thebatdorm]

Tim, regretting everything: "It doesn't touch the bald! I hate it when I don't touch the bald with the vanilla extract--what the heck is going on?!"

Dick & Jason, who were actively discussing how they were around for Goncharov when Tim had the misfortune to walk in the room, before giving the guy a crash course in tumblr as a whole: "Yeah."

[romeoslaughter]

wonderful dreams

forced awake to confront reality^^

[trickarrows-bishop]

kate bishop would LOVE goncharov. both iterations

show!kate: hey clint :)) have u seen goncharov :)) show!clint: have i what show!kate: yk, that movie where goncharov said "it's gonchin time" and then they gonched all over the place show!clint: that's not real

comic!kate: hey clint have you seen gonachrov comic!clint, wanting to get out the conversation: yeah it was a masterpiece

or, alternatively: comic!kate: hey clint have you seen goncharov comic!clint, who Knows the meme: of course i have idiot. andrey x goncharov forever

HSKDJSHSVS YES YES UES

[possessedscholar]

Haha get Gonched, idiot!

[secretspecialname]

[thealchemistal]

Goncharov Uquiz time for the memes, since it’s enjoying a renaissance!

[withswords]

as usual tumblr is acting very high and mighty about knowing things that other people might not know, and getting very meanspirited about twitter refugees who haven’t heard of goncharov. additionally, there’s a lot of misinformation and jokes floating around that are probably just confusing a lot of people further, which is kind of unfair. the reason you’ve never seen goncharov is because until pretty recently nobody had since the 1970s!

tumblr has always had a thriving community of lost media enthusiasts, and the search for goncharov was kickstarted on here in 2020 after the discovery of a pair of shoes with a label that seemed to promote martin scorsese’s goncharov, a mysterious mafia movie nobody had ever heard of, leading to the ironic ‘this idiot hasn’t seen goncharov’ meme. however, under the surface, a few intrepid lost media excavators wondered, why hadn’t they seen goncharov? was this movie a total hoax?

then in late 2020- an event that got somewhat lost in the jumble of tumblr’s destiel election haze- gonch-heads found an interview with columbia pictures studio head david begelmen (best known for an embezzlement scandal that would be revealed a few years later) that mentioned goncharov. recently the unearthed movie has received praise for its striking visuals, for being a movie truly ahead of its time for the intended 1973 release, so people are often surprised to learn that goncharov was one of the all time production clusterfucks at columbia.

the interviewer quotes begelmen saying, “We don’t say that word [Goncharov],” in a tone that comes across almost scolding. when asked for clarification, he adds: “You know in theater they have the Scottish play? We have that ****ing Naples movie.”

when you look into it, it’s easy to see why goncharov was internally considered a cursed production. there are more thorough posts out there about all the disasters on the set of goncharov, but i’ll go over the two big ones. the enigmatic presence of ilya was created by practical necessity. his role was originally much larger, before the actor died on set (from a heart attack supposedly unrelated to the filming), and much of his part had to be scrapped. studio shakeups as columbia nearly went bankrupt (not helped by goncharov’s ambitious budget) and moved shooting from gower street to burbank resulted in much of the physical film going missing, thought to be destroyed until nearly 15 years later. around this time, rather than attempt to go into reshoots for an expensive nightmare led by a rookie director, the filming was canned completely.

i think because scorsese is so high profile now, people forget that in 73, he was barely scorsese. he was an up-and-coming director with some borrowed clout, but goncharov was a costly mistake that nearly ended his career. there’s a reason he rarely speaks about it. this was only compounded by matteo j.

a lot of people out there will tell you that j was the real director of goncharov, and this is false, if not an understandable mistake. matteo j has been off the grid for decades now and there’s a lot of speculation about who he was, his involvement with the original goncharov project, and why he went underground. there are rumors that he ran afoul of the actual mafia, but in my opinion that’s just sensationalism- you might as well say that the goncharov curse took him out. all we REALLY know is that he was at some point an employee of columbia pictures who gained access to the lost reels of goncharov.

j may at best be responsible for compiling his recovered goncharov footage in the late 80s, into a film which he tried to release in italy in partnership with procacci, who was attempting at that time to break into production and due to the low profile and attempted studio coverup at columbia was not fully aware of the film’s history. there are conflicting accounts of how much influence j’s editing has on the film, with some people considering him basically the marcia lucas of goncharov, and others believing him to be an opportunist taking advantage of a mostly-finished piece of art for his own gain.

obviously the studio intervened before the film’s actual release, but much of the promotional material including the poster, the shoes, etc. came from this time. it seems that columbia came to some kind of agreement with j vis a vis distribution and profits, probably in the hopes of cashing in on scorsese’s by then ascended name, which was of course splashed across the top of every goncharov poster you can find. however, the release was called off a second time once scorsese himself got wind of it.

and that seemed to be the end of it. the completed goncharov went into the columbia vault, with only a handful of misremembered bootlegs and chopped-up local tv airings even attesting to the fact that it ever existed, until a leaked copy appeared with no warning on archive.org. this seems to have been a prelude from a disgruntled netflix employee to the distribution of the film through the service (although, of course, in inferior aspect ratio, ‘remastered’ and with several scenes edited). you can still find copies of the original film on archive if you want to experience it as... well, it’s hard to say what the ‘intended’ goncharov experience is with such a complicated history behind it, but as close to intended as we can get. i don’t know if scorsese has softened on j’s version of the movie after all this time, or if he’s just let his grudge over it go. all i know for sure is that goncharov really has earned the title of the greatest mafia movie never made

[cha-melodius]

Oh a TMFU/Gorncharov cross over??? Maybe Illya, Napoleon, and Gaby are just in Naples for an unrelated issue. Or Gorncharov knows Illya from childhood and calls his old friend in for help. We all know that Gaby and Katya would get on great. Illya and Gorncharov can both be idiots pining together over Napoleon and Andry respectively. Napoleon and Andry can probably bond over their tastes for finer things in life or something I dunno.

This is of course a very natural crossover! It's no secret that Goncharov is one of Guy Ritchie's favorite movies, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. definitely shows the great influences of all his movies; he's said before that he wanted to set TMFU in Italy as a nod to Goncharov, and in the original script Victoria's name was Sofia. However, since Goncharov was more or less still lost in 2015, I feel like the parallels are definitely underappreciated, especially all the clock/watch imagery and its ties to both the themes of broken families and Goncharov/Illya's trust issues. Few people realize that Illya's "You know what my mission is?" line when Napoleon returns his father's watch is a direct reference to Goncharov's "You know what the job is?" line in the clocktower scene when he confronts Andrey. Of course the very fact that Illya gets his watch back shows that Illya still holds on to his sense of self, unlike Goncharov, who loses it for good. (Goncharov google doc, short analysis of Goncharov's watch)

Now about that crossover.

I assume we're going on a crossover before the events of the movie, since, well, spoilers (can you spoil a 50 year old movie?), but there's not a lot of opportunity after. Perhaps set in the late 60s, after UNCLE has been a team for a while.

I like the idea that Goncharov knows Illya from his past, before Illya's father was arrested, and before Goncharov was truly inducted into the family business. When Illya's father is arrested and he's sent to an orphanage (common for children of political prisoners), he of course loses touch with everyone from that life, including Goncharov. I think Goncharov, even well-connected as he is, wouldn't know Illya is a KGB agent now, but perhaps Illya does know about Goncharov's move to Naples. He finds out about it during a KGB operation and doesn't really think much of it, but then the UNCLE team ends up in Naples on a mission and whoops, it's connected to Goncharov. This could definitely lead to some angst and conflicted feels since they were good friends as children, but now Goncharov is part of the mob, so they're obviously thrown into this antagonistic relationship. Despite himself, Illya can't help but want to try to find a solution that doesn't end with his old friend dead.

He's surprised to find that his partners support him in this, but of course Andrey and Napoleon hit it off (leading to some scenes of jealous Illya & Gonch; Goncharov gets threatening toward Napoleon because he thinks Napoleon is trying to make a move, only to be shocked that Illya is deadly serious about protecting his American; Illya and Napoleon have an argument about all the time Napoleon is spending with Andrey), and Gaby and Katya would definitely share a certain kinship. I think that seeing Goncharov and Andrey's relationship, fraught with unresolved homoerotic tension, and how destructive repressing those feelings is, would help Napoleon and Illya recognize the cycle in their own relationship and break it, finally admitting what they mean to each other. Perhaps Gaby secretly tries to convince Katya to leave Goncharov and the mob behind, but of course she fails because Katya's not at the breaking point yet, she still believes things can work out.

Obviously there's a ton of potential here for a crossover! And that's not even delving into the hints at Goncharov, Katya, and Andrey's histories with the KGB in canon, which is pretty much unexplored.

[madphantom]

hey this is a bit of an odd question but how are you doing? theres a lot of pressure on ur shoulders rn from the gonch thing but i wanted 2 make sure ur feeling ok <33

Hey, thanks for checking up on me ❤️

Tbh it is a bit of pressure and people aggressively asking me to hurry up or calling me an idiot is kinda meh (Seriously, do y'all think that'll make me faster?). I have a pretty busy schedule and I'm working on a film project that's kind of my baby and that I've been looking forward to for almost two years. I've always had trouble finding a location and enough people to assemble cast and crew, but now I finally got the opportunity for it and I'm very excited.

I'm also still at university and have to study for that, and I'm politically active and at a lot of protests, meetings, et cetera. Somewhere inbetween that I meet up with friends and sometimes I even sleep.

On the positive side, one project I'd worked on is finished, and I've done everything I have to do right now for the other one (not my own film, I just act in it).

I'm doing this, I definitely am, but it takes some time and getting heckled won't make me faster. So thanks for taking a moment to check up on me, I really appreciate it.

[captain-lovelace]

Get Gonched idiot

[wanderingwriter87]

get gonched idiot

[izzybadapple]

Goncharov is the most successful lying campaign ever and now every time i lie to someone i think "get gonched, idiot"

[enderearcheck]

A new reader has entered the ring! Thank you @thefirewolfblogger for making part 7 possible! 

Twitter knew, as soon as He’d entered tumblrs domain, that He’d made a mistake. Back home the algorithms always took him exactly where he wanted to go, but here? Where were the algorithms?! left to wander, unsure where to go. Twitter was utterly lost. 

How long had He been wandering?! What day was it? Why were shoelaces important?! 

Adds screamed at him to ‘shave his balls!’ And the creepy Pikachu hybrid man was definitely following him, 🦀

🦀Crabs 🦀 fell f🦀rom 🦀the sky, seemingly 🦀at random.  And the 🦀sky 🦀was a miasma of ever 🦀changing colors.        🦀

       🦀.                  🦀.          🦀

He was trapped in a cite of cringe 🦀🦀and debauchery. Just like he remembered…A war torn blog space of non-🦀Euclidean P*rnless mosterf*ckers. Strange posts that made no sense. Every word was a tw waiting to happen. Bloggers were Cat calling him… literally Hissing ferociously. The bird app cringed away. Accidentally bumping into a girl blogger. “Ew a Fucking bot!” They said disgusted. 

“Oh no no miss um…I’m not a—-

Twitter wasn’t able to finish that sentence because a giant crab screamed “SILENCE BOT!” and began shooting lasers at him. Twitter ducked into an alleyway desperately trying to escape only to run into another group of blogs. 

Hey a newbie! Looks like we found ourselves a fuck boi. How hasn’t He been devoured by bees yet? He’s so pathetic…I could take Him. Man anyone could take a piece of that Twink! I Bet this idiot has weak bones! Yeah! Get Gonched idiot! 

W-What?!

Oh my gon, he hasn’t seen Goncharov!

The crowd was closing in! Twitter was afraid.

LIKE/COMENT for PART 8!  @gondremark @ladyver0nica @r3nvy

[talenlee]

Story Pile: Goncharov

New Post has been published on PRESS.exe: Story Pile: Goncharov

Don’t worry, I’m not about to do an explainer on this movie, which does not exist. I cannot stress that enough: It does not exist. I don’t think I need to belabour that point, because it seems almost nobody’s trying to sustain kayfabe on this one. You’re not going to see a big, elaborate description of the critical analysis of a four hour long 1973 Mafia film starring Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman, Harvey Keitel, Cybill Shepherd and Lynda Carter (in a minor role), with a great big twist at the end like hahah, surprise, got you, this movie doesn’t exist!

I know, that is the kind of joke I like to tell! I like walking you down a garden path, introduce a ridiculous idea, and then surprise you by revealing that it’s true (or not, I mix it up). But no, in this case, I’m not here to do that. I’m going to do something so much worse, I’m going to talk to you about my feelings, and they’re not going to be happy or feel-good!

Content Warning: I’m going to talk about Goncharov, which I hope is obvious, and I’m going to talk about being angry at people and the way I felt treated without any intention to change their behaviour or ask apology.

First up let’s describe the phenomenon.

Goncharov is a community-constructed fake movie that users of Tumblr talked about in late November 2022, as part of an ongoing joke. I’m writing this in November, 2022, so for all I know after this point this thing has taken on a life of its own and transformed, or, it’s taken the course I predict which is, around December 1, most people stopped talking about it, the bubble of attention popped, some diehards used it as a platform to continue creating and it slowly trickled away as an interesting internet phenomenon.

I’m going to look stupid if the Goncharov Party gets elected to the United Nations or something in the mean time.

The genesis of Goncharov is a mis-printed label on a shoe that used what was probably a bad scan/OCR of a poster for Gomorrah. The text was a bit mangled, and a tumblr user shared a picture of the wonky text, and a commenter joked ‘this idiot hasn’t seen Goncharov.‘ From there, the bit began: Everyone wanted to make sure they were ‘in’ on the bit, acting as if of course they’d seen Goncharov.

And there are a lot of different ways this can go! This could become a real Seinfeldian moment, where the whole joke is someone goes ‘Goncharov has this in it’ and the natural response is ‘this idiot hasn’t seen Goncharov‘ and then repeat in a chain; everyone who shoots someone down about Goncharov talks about a fanciful thing from that movie, and everyone else then competes to sass them about how that’s definitely not in Goncharov. That’d be funny and kinda fundamentally meanspirited, a story where the joke is none of us have seen it and we’re all just pretending.

Tumblr did something different.

Tumblr went the other way.

Tumblr was suddenly full of people yes-anding everything anyone mentioned about Goncharov. People would mention a scene, and other people would talk about what they liked in the scene. People would mention a scene and other people would talk about how that tied into themes in a different scene. Imagery and symbolism and themes and vibes and all these things piled up and quotes, oh the quotes. Quotes that range from Winter comes to Naples with its bald demanding pomposity or “of course we’re in love, that’s why I tried to shoot you”/”if we really were in love you wouldn’t have missed,” which is as good as you imagine it being delivered, and of course, “it’s gonching time,” peerless text and all that, well, they are all canon and they are all yes-anded.

Crucially, they are not all true in the same moment and in the same way, but that is part of the play of Goncharov. It is about the memes, the ideas, the vibes of Mafia movies of the 1970s. It’s indescribably playful, and it’s fun, as you throw things into the thread of narratives, watching who sees your ideas and what they pick up on and what they share. There are a body of people who recognise that Katya Goncharov’s surname should be Goncharova, and the error shows that she isn’t really Russian, just like how she was never really married to Goncharov. Or maybe it’s because Goncharov is the one who introduced her and at no point did she correct him, showing everyone who speaks Russian in those scenes that he doesn’t really know her. Or maybe her name is Goncharova and everyone knows that, acting like that’s always how it’s been, and each of those ideas came from some people, perceived as problems and picked up and used and distributed.

Another thing that came up early was a lot of people immediately got involved on making sure there was a common thread of ‘unreality’ tagging of Goncharov posts; that people who struggled with ideas like gaslighting could avoid. It’s kind of funny, that the great event had three basic things to avoid; don’t #gaslight, don’t #gatekeep, but you could #girlboss, because of Katya, or Sofia, or Alina (the dancer who dies in the first 15 minutes).

There’s a lot of funny stuff you can do with Goncharoving around. And it has been a delight of a weekend, as this wonderful, silly, funny experience happened around me. And then it drew to an abrupt halt, as I approach people outside the space and ask: Hey, do you know about Goncharov?

Sometimes they yes-and me, and hey, that’s funny and we stop because we know the joke, and that’s that. And sometimes they don’t, and I then get to tell them about this delightfully weird thing going on. And it took about eight hours before I saw people who weren’t on tumblr and weren’t involved, complaining about the joke.

I saw critique from Reddit that Tumblr ‘should have’ done the ‘prank’ differently, as if this was a thing set up with an aim and a target, as opposed to people having fun telling stories. I saw complaints that the writing was low quality as if we needed to keep out the bad writing. It seemed overwhelmingly, the places where Goncharov did not happen had opinions about how Goncharov should be happening, which almost always demonstrated an opinion on what Goncharov was doing:

It was being fun.

I saw people calling people asking Neil Gaiman about it stochastic harrassment. Since Gaiman is on tumblr, and people ask him about things that interest them, a lot of them asked him about Goncharov, and he didn’t like that, so he made fun of people who asked him. And it felt like such a baffling criticism to have, because:

Stochastic terrorism is used to refer to creating climates inducing lone wolf behaviour, not trends of people asking about a common thread of commentary.

Tumblr has blocking tools that can be keyword based, so if someone asks you about Goncharov, and you have that word blocked, it won’t show up.

Neil Gaiman gets waves of related asks any time anything happens at all.

Which means that this felt like recruiting Neil Gaiman as an innocent victim of Goncharov as if a millionaire who can literally pay someone to empty his inbox deserves sympathy for the dreadful thing of being asked annoying questions as if that’s not what he has a tumblr account for, and it also means that bringing this up means you’re not aware of fundamental things about Tumblr, like how the messaging system works. It was criticism of a thing you’re pretty sure happened over there to someone you’re pretty sure can’t handle it, which was pretty bad, you’re pretty sure.

It felt very strange to me when it happened too because at that point, Twitter had just started on a path that sure looks like letting a few Nazis hang out in your soon-to-be Nazi bar? Dozens of other platforms were doing their thing and developing through a variety of dramas, and things were being done that had massive problems to them, but tumblr

Tumblr annoyed Neil Gaiman.

In a period where I was looking at what every single different social media platform was for, I was stunned to realise that ‘being Tumblr’ was an inherent mark against an idea. During a World Cup that people were tweeting about Qatar using slavery to build stadiums for FIFA, there was still this inherent disdain for Tumblr things because Tumblr had made up a movie that no corporation could take credit for, and were having fun telling stories about it. Tumblr was tumblr about it. And there’s all sorts of claims about why Tumblr has this position none of which I feel comfortable backing up and I don’t need to because this isn’t a thing to be solved. It’s an experience, much like Goncharov, to remember.

Just this heavy salvoing of: Hey, you know this thing you think is interesting? This really odd phenomenon of people creating stories and being silly?

Well, we’re pretty sure it sucks.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Unreality

[murderandcoffee]

get gonched, idiot

[littlemisspipebomb]

Can't stop repeating it's gonchin time. Making coffee? Gonchin time . Thank you

Get Gonched Idiot