Cirrus@Austlit

Film, television, and stage writer.

Mac Gudgeon grew up in Wollongong and worked on the waterfront during the Vietnam War, spending a couple of years as a painter and docker on the wharves in Adelaide, Melbourne, and Port Kembla.

One of his earliest television scripts was for the 1984 mini-series Waterfront; directed by Chris Thomson, the mini-series won the 1985 Logie award for Best Single Miniseries/Telemovie. He followed this in 1987 with both another mini-series (The Petrov Affair, co-written with Cliff Green and directed by Michael Carson) and a film (Ground Zero, co-written with Jan Sardi and directed by Bruce Myles and Michael Pattinson). The latter attracted an AFI Award nomination for Gudgeon and Sardi (for Best Screenplay, Original).

Gudgeon's final screenplay in the 1980s was The Delinquents (1989), a film adaptation of Criena Rohan's novel of the same name.

During the 1990s, Gudgeon wrote episodes of several television programs, including police procedurals Skirts (1990), Stingers (1998), and Good Guys Bad Guys (1997-1998), as well as writing for the Australian Children's Television Foundation series Lift Off (1992-1996) and Sky Trackers (1994). He also co-wrote (with American script-writer Rudy Wurlitzer) the screenplay for American film Wind (1992), a fictional account of the America's Cup, and contributed several scripts to Halifax f.p. between 1995 and 2001.

Gudgeon's scripts since 200 have included telemovie Dogwoman: A Grrrl's Best Friend (2000), television documentary Captain Cook: Obsession and Discovery (2007), telemovie Monash: The Forgotten Anzac (2008, co-written with John Moore), and television series Killing Time (2010).

His 2009 film Last Ride, directed by Glendyn Ivin, attracted a slew of acting and directing awards and nominations, as well as rave review from critics: Gudgeon was nominated for an AWGIE Award and shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards for his script. The screenplay was based on the novel The Last Ride by Denise Young.

Gudgeon has also worked as a script editor, including on film Wolf Creek (written by Greg Mclean) and television mini-series Devil's Dust (written by Kris Mrksa).