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When you are face-to-face with a ferocious alien that wants to eat you, there are many weapons of choice you might choose for the life or death battle. Actor, Jeff Rossman, who portrays Gus Luther in Super Duper Alien Hunters, likes to crack alien skulls with his vintage Louisville Slugger baseball bat. Gus is totally old school when it comes to the special ops, special forces, espionage game. Gus has been roughing up enemies of the state and saving the world for a long time. He loves knocking out an alien’s teeth with a quick swing of his bat. Saving the world has changed a bit over the years.

Gus used to simply charge in and crack heads. The enemy was the enemy and the enemy was bad and that’s all you needed to know. He now needs to take pictures, do something called surveillance and get evidence to prove the enemy is truly bad before he can give it a good butt whipping. Even though his approach is totally old school, there is still a place in the world for a bad boy like Gus Luther.

When the team at Blind River Studios needed to cast the flashy and bombastic role of Gus, they knew it would be a difficult task. Executive Producer, Aaron Vnuk, stated, “We had a lot of actors audition for Gus, but nobody fit the role or performed it the way we needed. Director, Mark Foley and I were even thinking about rewriting the role to better fit some of the actors who auditioned. We cringed at this thought so we decided to give it one more shot at finding the real Gus. Mark browsed through hundreds of profiles on Back Stage and he came across a guy who lived in Connecticut and even had the look of Gus Luther.”

That evening, the production team received an email from Mark and Aaron asking them to review a new audition video. Every member of the team responded with positive feedback and enthusiasm. After a long search, it was clear that Gus was finally found.

Aaron recalled, “The next day I called Jeff Rossman. It was crazy because I could totally hear Gus in this guy’s voice. It was like I was talking straight to the character himself. Jeff had a lot of experience and I appreciated his no nonsense approach to acting and working on independent film sets. I knew he would make it easy for us and there wouldn’t be any drama associated with bringing him on board. I remember Jeff saying he was excited about Super Duper Alien Hunters because it’s a family-friendly movie and his grand kids would get a kick out of it. I told him I’ll get him tickets for his grandkids and family to the premiere if he accepts my offer and thankfully he did. It was my pleasure to let the production team know that we now had Gus Luther in all his glory!”

During the filming of Super Duper Alien Hunters, Jeff brought all the arrogance, swag and old school toughness to the character. Gus is a big personality and has a significant amount of screen time in the movie. Gus and The Beast (portrayed by Dennis Broderick) team up to form an intimidating duo. They were given their own storyline as veteran, super commandos. Aaron Vnuk commented, “Jeff and Dennis had to play two of the biggest peacocks in the movie! Jeff had us all laughing every time he stepped onto the set as Gus. We had him in the gym searching for his boot camp class, in the woods hunting aliens, floating on shore in a raft, burping, farting and threatening the terrifying aliens as if they were a bunch of wimps he was about to shake down on a street corner. I loved hearing the team describe Jeff’s wardrobe. The joke on the set was that he looked like a cross between Rambo and a baseball bat beating, brass knuckle wearing, mafia street thug.”

During the 13 days of filming on the set of Super Duper Alien Hunters, the team got to know more about Jeff and his fascinating career prior to acting. At the time he retired at the age of 65, at the end of 2011, he was a registered nurse working with spinal cord injuries and traumatic brain injuries. The production team was honored to learn that he also spent 22 years in the active army reserve with a combat support hospital unit in Hartford as a head nurse in emergency services and retired at the rank of Major. Jeff served as a basic life support instructor-trainer with the American Heart Association as well as being an instructor in Advanced cardiac life support.  He started acting in 2012 and was cast in many community and professional theater work and several short and feature films.

Aaron is excited to hear how audiences react to Gus Luther. He concluded, “Jeff is one of the most critical actors in this movie. Gus is the catalyst to the audience meeting the lead character, Nelson Munkhouse (performed by Matt Stevens). Nelson is stuck at his boring job of working the front desk at a gym when Gus approaches and ignites the scene. My biggest worry about casting Gus Luther was that we weren’t going to find an actor strong enough and talented enough to open the movie going toe-to-toe with Matt Stevens. We filmed this scene during the first day of production. My entire team and I let out a sigh of relief when Jeff stepped up to the front desk and delivered the scene with Matt. We knew we had our Gus and we knew we had our movie. The audiences will tell us the rest when we unleash Super Duper Alien Hunters to the world in the spring of 2023. If the movie is a success, Jeff Rossman will have a lot to do with that. His character is at the heart of this movie. We feel his performance is hilarious and memorable.”