Matthew Chapman (author)

Matthew H. D. Chapman is an English journalist, author, screenwriter, director and activist.

Writing and directing credits
Chapman's most-famous film, The Ledge, which he wrote and directed, starred Charlie Hunnam, Liv Tyler, Terrence Howard, and Patrick Wilson. The film deals with an intellectual, personal, and ultimately fatal feud between an atheist and an evangelical Christian. An atheist on a ledge is forced to decide whether to die or to see someone he loves killed. According to Chapman, it is "a piece of work that makes the basic intellectual arguments for atheism, but also makes a powerful emotional argument against cruelty of a religious kind" and the "ways people suffer as a result".

Chapman has written widely on the creation–evolution controversy in the US, particularly the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, in which 11 parents successfully sued the school district to prevent them from reading a required statement aloud in ninth-grade science classes whenever evolution was taught, and is involved in promoting science and ethical technology across the world.

He has written and directed six films, written numerous screenplays, had articles published in Harper's Magazine and National Geographic among others, and blogged for the Huffington Post. He is the author of two books, "Trials of the Monkey – An Accidental Memoir" and "40 Days and 40 Nights – Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania".

ScienceDebate.org
Chapman founded ScienceDebate.org in 2007. His co-founders were fellow screenwriter Shawn Lawrence Otto, science writer Chris Mooney, marine biologist and science blogger Sheril Kirshenbaum, noted physicist Lawrence Krauss, and philosopher Austin Dacey. The organization was formed to pressure the presidential candidates to hold a debate on science and technology issues.

Family
Chapman is the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin. His mother Clare was the daughter of the philosophy professor and author Francis Cornford and poet Frances Cornford (née Darwin), daughter of Francis Darwin. His father, Cecil Chapman, was the son of the noted physicist and astronomer, Sydney Chapman, responsible for early research on the nature of the ozone layer.

Books

 * Trials of the Monkey: An Accidental Memoir (Picador, 5 July 2002) ISBN 0-312-30078-6
 * 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania. (Harper Collins, 10 April 2007) ISBN 0-06-117945-0

Filmography

 * Hussy (1980) (screenplay, director)
 * Strangers Kiss (1983) (screenplay, director)
 * Slow Burn (1986) (screenplay, director)
 * Heart of Midnight (1988) (screenplay, director)
 * A Grande Arte (1991) (additional dialogue) (screenplay: English version)
 * Consenting Adults (1992) (screenplay)
 * Color of Night (1994) (screenplay)
 * What's the Worst That Could Happen? (2001) (screenplay)
 * Runaway Jury (2003) (screenplay)
 * Black Water Transit (2009) (screenplay)
 * The Ledge (2011) (screenplay, director)
 * Reaching for the Moon (2013) (screenplay)
 * "The American Guest" (2021) (screenplay) 4-hour limited series on HBO/HBO Max