KENNETH GILDIN began his professional career as an actor. He appeared in the film TOTAL RECALL opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was in the film HAIR, where he danced for Twyla Tharp. And he joined the Broadway cast of GREASE as Eugene, with Jack Coleman as Danny Zuko.
Ken segued into writing, working on award shows and benefits, writing speeches and comedy routines for politicians and celebrities, including Elizabeth Taylor, Hillary Clinton, Sally Field, Rita Moreno, Bruce Vilanch and Eric McCormack to name a few.
Ken worked at STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, writing the storyline for the classic DATA/LORE episode and appeared as both Data and Lore opposite Brent Spiner. He went on to work at Columbia Pictures Television and Walt Disney Studios, where he wrote the copy that appeared on DVD boxes. At 20th Century Fox, he wrote the content for a series of CD ROM trading cards for BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER.
Ken wrote and produced two short films, QUEERWEB and CASTING COUCH, that have played in film festivals around the world, including in Honolulu, where QUEERWEB was an award-winner, Hamburg, Sydney, New Zealand, Croatia, Toronto, Tokyo, Hartford, Vancouver, Brussels, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
Ken has written several scripts that have won over 35 scriptwriting competitions. His TV mini-series, THE POLSKI AFFAIR, based on his father’s award-winning novel of the same name, was the winner in the Filmhaus Berlin competition as Best TV Script. It was also the winner in the 2023 Cinesis Film Festival. And it received perfect “10s” from the Santa Barbara International Screenplay Awards.
His script, THICKER THAN BLOOD, which deals with the rights of gays to adopt, was a finalist in Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope Screenplay Competition. It was a winner at The Vegas Movie Awards Screenplay Competition and earned him the title of Distinguished Writer of the Season from Filmhaus Berlin.
Ken’s script, OPERATION RADIO CITY, a period comedy, deals with the little-known fact that during World War II, the army had to station soldiers at Radio City Music Hall to protect something at the theater that actually had military significance. (Nazis and Rockettes!)
And his family film script, FLYING HIGH won Best Adventure Screenplay in The San Diego International Kids’ Film Festival. It also won Best Family Film in London’s Lonely Wolf International Screenplay and Scriptwriting Competition, was a finalist in the Beyond Hollywood International Film Festival and was one of the top IMDB nominees.
Ken can be reached at kgildin@.
THE POLSKI AFFAIR - a 5-part, 7-hour series Budget: $30M+ | Historical ⋄ Drama THE POLSKI AFFAIR: Rosa Feuermann is living in the Warsaw Ghetto with her husband and two young boys. Having once been a chemistry teacher, she is recruited by the Resistance to make a bomb to blow up the railroad tracks to slow down the Deportation. She uses the sewers and tunnels under the city to sneak out of the ghetto, but when she returns, she discovers that her family has been taken. After escaping to the forest where she lives with the Partisans for a year, she is sent to the Hotel Polski to uncover the Germans’ covert plan there. Her relationship with the Nazi Commandant of the Hotel results in her survival, but her guilt haunts her and affects her family for decades, especially after her son discovers the truth about what happened at the Hotel Polski.
THICKER THAN BLOOD Budget: $5M - $10M | Drama ⋄ Comedy A custody battle between a boy's biological father who abandoned him and the gay uncle who helped raise him, forces the uncle to re-evaluate his priorities and explore the question of what makes a family.
FLYING HIGH Budget: $1M - $5M | Family ⋄ Comedy With their parents away from the family farm for a few days, brothers John (14 years old) and Tommy (10), who don't get along, except for their love of model airplanes, rebuild an old crop-duster and get it to fly. They get into all sorts of trouble, catch a thief, and learn what it means to be brothers.
Tufts University
(1972-1976)
Mannes College The New School for Music
(1970-1972)