Today, Kat Bolus sits down with WVIA Multimedia Producer/Director Alexander Monelli to talk about their VIA Short Take, "The Day Carbondale Stood Still." The documentary focuses on a celestial event in the Pioneer City in Lackawanna County that was later debunked as a hoax. But questions remain about what happened on Nov. 9, 1974.
NEWS VOICES
Welcome to News Voices, a weekly feature where members of the WVIA News team will talk with each other — and sometimes sources — about key things we've learned in recent stories we have been working on.
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KAT: You're listening to Morning Edition here on WVIA radio. I'm Kat Bolus, and this is a special edition of News Voices. Today, I'm sitting down with WVIA filmmaker Alexander Monelli.
ALEXANDER: Hey, what's up, Kat?
KAT: So Al and I worked together on an original documentary about a mysterious incident five decades ago in Carbondale. The VIA short take premieres on Facebook and YouTube today at 10 a.m. Al, tell me about "The Day Carbondale Stood Still."
ALEXANDER: Well, first off, thank you, Kat, for having me on and for working on this film with me. I mean, you went above and beyond, and this is just as much your film as it is mine. So I'm truly happy and excited to premiere this today and to have our names on it.
KAT: Of course.
ALEXANDER: So in November of 1974, a bunch of people claimed to have seen a light in the sky, a UFO-looking light, and these kids reported seeing it land in this pond in Carbondale, thus opening this saga that lasted for a couple of days. There are a lot of twists and turns in this story, so it's really a web of mystery about did a UFO land? If not, what was it?
KAT: Al and I, we went out and we interviewed some of the organizers of the Carbondalien Festival, and one of the things that stuck out to me was that the organizers wanted to celebrate this kind of wondrous thing that happened in Carbondale. And Al, I think you did a really good job of getting into that in your documentary. Was that important?
ALEXANDER: Yeah, I mean, it really became an urban legend. The issue, though, was there are a lot of variations and stories and stretching of certain facts. So it was nice to actually go back into some of the old news stories and find some of the actual factual things that happened. But I think what you were touching on, and this is one reason why I love Carbondale now, they are leaning into this. It's 50 years later, and they threw a whole festival to celebrate this, like, did it happen or not, kind of weird, fun story. But just the wonder of it all, like you said, I mean, that was really what inspired me and drove me into this story, and where I kind of landed in terms of structuring things and how to tell the story. I wanted you to feel this sense of wonder about it because it did bring the town together briefly. I mean, 10,000 people were at this pond, you know, a day after it happened. You know, things like that don't happen so much anymore. We all have our own algorithms giving us what we want, and for this one brief moment, we were all united, or at least Carbondale was in "what is this?"
KAT: One of the things that I think was interesting for both of us was George Graham here at the (WVIA) station had tape from like, two days after the incident happened. And for me, you know, just in my reporting, that was a really cool element to it. And then Jerome Gillott brought us more day-of tape. Do you get a lot of that in the stories that you work on?
ALEXANDER: Well, I don't know if I get to this level, to this degree — like these are things that have not been heard in 50 years. You know, we even got that song from a local musician.
KAT: Oh, the song was great.
ALEXANDER: Yeah, Dave White. And then, yeah, Jerome just showed up — we did an interview with him, he was the photographer who was there that night when it happened — and he brought this tape recording of the police chief at the time talking about what their investigation kind of brought forth. If it was just me working on this film, I don't know if I would have gotten those things. So again, that's why I'm really proud of this film and really proud of our collaboration and I hope we can do another one.
KAT: Yeah, I'm really excited about it. I think everyone who watches it is gonna kind of fall in love with the mystery of the Carbondalien, as they like to call it. What do you kind of hope people take away from the short take?
ALEXANDER: I would really like if people were like, "Oh, I want to go check out Carbondale." Now, after seeing this, I think you might be intrigued to say, "You know what? I gotta check this out. I gotta read about this. I gotta go visit Carbondale. I gotta go see that silt pond, you know, behind Russell Park." There is progress happening in Carbondale. I mean, you can see it. There's a lot of businesses, there's a lot of people and excitement. There is a mood in Carbondale that is improving and increasing, to me, at least, so hopefully it inspires people that way and just entertains you and delights you for 10 minutes.
KAT: Well. Al, thank you for chatting with me this morning.
ALEXANDER: Thanks, Kat.
KAT: You're welcome. Stay with us here on WVIA radio.
READ MORE ON CARBONDALE'S CELESTIAL HISTORY: Close encounters of the Carbondale kind celebrated
