Teacher's objective is finally clear

By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

Scott Rogers poured $30,000 into his acting school in Kaka'ako four months ago to kick it up to another level, but got only a couple of new students.

Scott Rogers, left, owner of the American Academy of Film & Television in Kaka'ako, tells his student-actors that they have to know their objective to succeed on stage. It's a lesson that Rogers now applies to his business, too. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

Again, nothing happened.

Then an old friend paid Rogers a visit in November and got him thinking about business — and not just about the business of teaching acting.

"At first I didn't have any idea what he was talking about," Rogers said. "I needed to open up my way of thinking."

Now Rogers sees his 1,600-square-foot academy on Waimanu Street as much more than a school devoted to just film and television acting. Starting in January, he wants to begin making it Honolulu's mecca for acting, screenwriting, filmmaking, television, theater and a new niche teaching on-camera techniques to newscasters, military and business leaders, lawyers, politicians and anyone else who could use help standing in front of a camera or before an audience.

Rogers, 41, has nearly 20 years of experience producing and directing plays and coaching and teaching actors in Los Angeles and Honolulu, and on Maui and Guam. He was also the acting coach for the final season of "Baywatch Hawaii" and the "Baywatch Hawaiian Wedding" movie that followed.

Rogers' thick, bushy black-and-gray beard provides a jarring contrast to his shaved head. His teaching style can be equally wide ranging — sometimes gentle, sometimes blunt and often funny.

"Yes, there was acting on Baywatch," Rogers said. "You might have missed it, but it was there."

Like others who have tried to turn passion into profit, Rogers found himself unequipped for the realities of running a small business during Hawai'i's continuing hard times.

Now he's fired up about the possibilities of taking his nearly 4-year-old business in a new direction.

Inspiration came from a name familiar to longtime Hawai'i television viewers.

Bob Basso was a sports anchor, anchorman and news director for KHON from 1968 to 1973 but has found a new career as a Los Angeles-based business consultant, motivational speaker and author whom People magazine called "America's No. 1 Fun Motivator."

Basso was also a longtime friend of Rogers' father, Herb Rogers, who brought Broadway shows to Honolulu in the 1960s and 1970s and took his three sons back and forth to theater and television gigs in Los Angeles and Honolulu.

"I certainly changed Scott's diapers as a child," Basso said. "Whether I changed his business remains to be seen."

Basso asked Rogers the same questions he had put before Wal-Mart executives years before: "What's the difference between his business and his 'activity'?"

Rogers had no clue what Basso was talking about. Then Basso told him that Wal-Mart executives realized that their activity was retail sales. But their business was much bigger. It was the homey touches that brought people into their stores, beginning with the senior-citizen greeters.

The clouds of confusion began clearing in Rogers' head. His "activity," he realized, was teaching acting. But his business needed to focus on attracting creative people to his doorstep — and hoping paying students will follow. Rogers has since offered free space to the Hawai'i Screen Writers Association so the group could put on a free workshop. He has made a similar offer to the Hawai'i Film Makers Association.

Rogers has always had problems balancing teaching with business.

He offers a free screen test and critique but feels uncomfortable convincing people they need to pay for lessons if they want to get better.

"I'm not a closer," he said. "I didn't want to sit there like a used-car salesman — not if I'm going to be their teacher. I want to maintain the trust of a student-teacher relationship. And I didn't feel I could do that if I was trying to sell them."

Getting to this point in business and life has been a journey that took Rogers through stage, television, films and acting. He remembers hanging out backstage with his two younger brothers on their father's Honolulu productions and getting his first taste of acting as a 4-year-old munchkin in the 1965 production of "The Wizard of Oz."

He also appeared on the old "Checkers and Pogo" television show in between going to school in Kahuku and at 'Iolani.

In the mid-1970s Herb Rogers moved the family permanently to Los Angeles. At the age of 15 Rogers got his Screen Actors Guild card and appeared on national television as a juvenile delinquent on the short-lived "Shazam" superhero television show.

"For a 15-year-old, being on television is about the money and the recognition and the fact that you're treated like a king on a TV show," Rogers said. "Then I grew up. That's what happens to all childhood actors."

He went to Humboldt State University in Northern California to study theater and psychology with a business minor. It was an odd combination that wouldn't last because Rogers dropped out in 1981 to go on the road as a stage manager making $750 a week.

"What happened?" he asked. "What happens to any show that anybody works on? It closed."

He got other jobs as a stage manager, ran a theater in Los Angeles with his father and produced and directed, often working with television actors. In 1988 he began coaching some of them to prepare for auditions, charging them $50 to $70 for an hour of work. The actors began getting gigs and word about Rogers spread.

In 1992 he rented space at a theater in Venice Beach for one night a week at a cost of $100 per month. He charged students $200 each per month and began teaching part-time, augmenting his full-time theater job.

He and his wife Jeanne — who now teaches drama at the Waldorf School in Kahala and acts in corporate videos — wanted to raise their two children in Hawai'i, so they moved to Maui in 1994 where Scott ran the Maui Arts and Cultural Center. He took over the financially troubled Maui Community Theater the next year and left for Guam in 1997 to produce a Las Vegas-style nightclub at the Sand Castle Showroom.

By 1999, Scott and Jeanne decided they wanted to stop chasing jobs and move back to Hawai'i. For a change, work would have to follow them.

Scott started teaching acting classes one night a month at St. Andrew's Priory following the same formula he used in California, then moved to Yellow Brick Studios in Kaka'ako. Then the "Baywatch" producers called and Rogers found himself busy with 15 new actors, including first-time local actors Jason Momoa and Stacy Kamano.

"They were models and they were expected to learn how to act while they were shooting 12 hours a day on the water," Rogers said. "They were racing the sun, literally. I have a lot of respect for that show, even though they were the butt of a lot of jokes — no pun intended."

Rogers had always been impressed by the breadth of Hawai'i's theater community but "Baywatch" made him see the need for more local actors trained for television and film. So four months ago he rented his own full-time space, with a monthly rent of $1,600 and overhead costs of another $7,500 for a staff of three and other expenses.

As money poured out of his savings, Rogers got scared.

"I had expected to do better, but I was naive," he said. "Basically everything I have is tied up in this business. I'm upside down. I'm as upside down as I can be, but I think the potential is good."

As Rogers prepares for the next phase of his American Academy of Film & Television, he falls back on what he knows best — teaching and coaching 40 or so students.

At his studio the other night, Rogers once again pounded the message to his students that they have to know what motivates their characters.

"You have to ask yourself what your objective is and you have to have the answer."

It's a lesson that Rogers learned long ago in theater and television. Now he realizes he has to learn it, again, in business.