Ivan Rogers

Ivan Rogers was born on Sep 20, 1954 in USA. Ivan Rogers's big-screen debut came with The Runner directed by Chris Jones in 1992, strarring Lewis T. Holden.

Ivan Rogers was born on September 20, 1954, in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is one of the three sons of Paul B. Rogers, an independent building contractor, and Ola M. Rogers, a professional secretary. He attended Pike High School in Indianapolis, graduating in 1972. Immediately after graduation he attended Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, on a music scholarship as a percussion major. While there he began studying karate in his spare time, eventually achieving the level of second-degree black belt. Academic life began to pale compared to performing professionally, so he left the university to go on the road and play music. He traveled extensively with various bands until he tired of the night life and living out of a suitcase. It was then he decided to leave the music business and further pursue his interest in karate. He began fighting (kickboxing) professionally and rose to the status of world-rated light-heavyweight. After one of his bouts Rogers was approached by an executive from a video disc company and asked to write, produce and star in an educational video disc teaching basic karate and self-defense. He accepted the offer and completed the project, which proved to be successful for both Rogers and the company. Rogers followed the disc with a similar program for the videotape market, and it, too, was successful. Rogers, now infatuated with the entire creative filmmaking process, decided to accept a new challenge: writing a dramatic script for a feature film, as opposed to writing an educational script for video. Though he had many ideas for stories, he realized putting them into the correct format on paper required more knowledge than he had at the time, so he began to read everything he could lay his hands on about writing scripts for feature films. He enjoyed the process of scriptwriting and decided to seek and live more of the "writer's life". He moved to Maui, Hawaii, where he managed a youth center, taught karate and wrote. In 1984 Rogers completed his first feature-length script, entitled "The Pivot". He entered it in an international scriptwriting contest sponsored by Writer's Digest magazine. The results were very favorable. Out of thousands of contestants, his script placed in the top 70, which was designated as the Winner's category. This further motivated him to pursue scriptwriting as a career. He began to miss his involvement in karate and the "fight game" in general, however, so he began promoting kickboxing bouts in the islands. During one of his promotions he was approached by a health club owner and asked to teach karate and train fighters at the health club. After he learned more about the health and fitness business, he decided to buy into the club and become a part owner. he helped build the Atlantis Health and Fitness Center into one of the largest health, fitness and professional karate training centers in the South Pacific. Word of Rogers' success spread to Los Angeles, where Maui native