Beast Beast: Alec Baldwin and Danny Madden on Building a Sympathetic Gun Obsessive

Beast Beast does something you don’t usually see in a Sundance darling: It presents a gun-obsessive who is, at least initially, sympathetic. The film, written and directed by Danny Madden and executive produced by, among others, Alec Baldwin, tells the story of three Georgia teens whose lives intersect tragically. Shirley Chen plays a theater kid, Krista; Jose Angeles plays a skater she likes, Nito; and Will Madden, Danny Madden’s brother, plays Adam, a gun aficionado who dreams of YouTube stardom. Whatever our thoughts on guns, Adam wins us over with his modern underdog qualities: Internet commenters belittle his videos. He stumbles when trying to sound cool in his intros. He has no idea how to be an influencer. His dad urges him to give it up if he can’t monetize. Baldwin initially saw him being played by a Channing Tatum type whose good looks in real life don’t translate to Internet fame. “I was looking at a guy who was like the captain of the football team,” Baldwin told MovieMaker. “Like he like he had everything going for him. But he just had no social skills, like all the cool kids in school are leaving him in the dust in…
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