BPS 272: Down the First Feature Rabbit Hole with Carlson Young

Today on the show we have writer, director and actress Carlson
Young. Carlson is the creator of the new film The Blazing
World.

Ever since Margaret (Carlson Young) was six years old, she has been
haunted by the memory of watching her sister drown during an
explosive fight between her parents. As a young woman, she slides
further into her twisted inner life, ultimately finding herself on
the brink of suicide. Through an epic journey down the smokiest and
scariest corridors of her imagination, she tries to exorcise the
demons pushing her closer and closer to the edge.The Blazing World
is Carlson Young’s debut feature; it is based on her short of the
same name, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film
Festival.

Young brings to life in striking vibrancy an internality that is at
once darkly beautiful and entirely terrifying.Blending horror and
fantasy, this film is imaginative and gutsy, painting Margaret’s
inner life as at once an alien realm and a devastatingly familiar
emotional landscape. Manifesting her trauma through a series of
lusciously unnerving locations and moving, bizarre interactions,
Young unearths something often quietly, privately buried in our
struggles toward the light.




As the writer, director, and star, Carlson took her decade of
on-set acting experience appearing in film directorial debut, THE
BLAZING WORLD MTV’s SCREAM TV Series, KEY AND PEELE, and Netflix’s
EMILY IN PARIS, and developed the feature which was shot during the
height of the pandemic in Austin, Texas and also held its premiere
at the Sundance Film Festival in 2021.The film co-stars Dermot
Mulroney, Vinessa Shaw, and horror icon Udo Kier. The Blazing World
premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2021 to rave reviews.

We discuss the difficult process of bringing this personal film to
the screen, how she used a short to get the feature film made, how
she got financing, shooting durning COVID and much more.

Enjoy my conversation with Carlson Young.

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