THE YEAR IS 1973. The setting is Naples, Italy. The cast includes Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel and Al Pacino as vengeful mobsters torn between duty and guilt. Not ringing a bell? That’s because this stone-cold Martin Scorsese masterpiece, Goncharov, is in fact the result of a viral Tumblr post and, like all great memes, has spiralled into internet fandom chaos. It’s even made its way to the octogenarian filmmaker himself.
It all began with an original post on the social-network site which showed a pair of knock-off boots with a label reading, “The greatest Mafia movie ever made. Martin Scorsese presents Goncharov” where the brand should have been shown on the tongue.
The origin of the strange shoe label remains a mystery, although some have guessed that it comes down to a misspelling of the 2008 Italian film Gomorrah, which used Scorsese’s name for promotional purposes in the US (the filmmaker had given his blessing after publicly hailing the film “a tough, forceful look at the Neapolitan underworld”). Tumblr users went into overdrive, and took it upon themselves to turn “the greatest Mafia movie ever made” into an online reality.