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Matthew H.D. Chapman is a British-born American writer, journalist, screenwriter, and director.

Films
Chapman has written and directed five films, produced four films and written or co-written numerous screenplays. His latest film, The Ledge, which he wrote and directed, stars Charlie Hunnam, Liv Tyler, Terrence Howard, and Patrick Wilson. It was shot in Louisiana in spring 2010 and was nominated for Best US Drama at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Bought by IFC, it had its theatrical release in the U.S. in early July 2011. The film deals with an intellectual, personal, and ultimately fatal feud between an atheist and an evangelical Christian. In an interview on the Skepticality podcast, Chapman said that his "experiences with fundamentalists in the south and in Pennsylvania led to [him] doing this film, which is the first pro-atheist feature film to be released in America." He explained that his aim was to "get the film to smaller towns and cities where religion is way more oppressive than in New York or Los Angeles [so that] atheists who are thinking of coming out of the closet can see the movie, see the arguments, feel supported." His screenplay about the tragic love affair between American poet Elizabeth Bishop and Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares was produced in 2013 under the title “Reaching for the Moon” (original title: “Flores Raras”). He is currently working on several scripts, including one on the early days of Paul Watson, alleged eco-terrorist, founder of the Sea Shepherd organization, and currently on the run. Chapman is also developing a musical set in 15th Century Italy.

Books
Chapman is the author of two nonfiction books. "Trials of the Monkey: An Accidental Memoir", is a book about a trip he took "to the town of the Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton Tennessee [and] what it was like being a Darwin descendant in the south below the Bible Belt".

He wrote "40 Days and 40 Nights – Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania", after he "covered the Dover trial, which was the case of a group of fundamentalists taking over a school board and trying to get creationism taught alongside evolution as a science".

He stated that “the fascinating thing about doing those books was to realise how many deeply deeply religious people there are all over America, and living in New York or LA you have no idea of the depth of belief and the cruelty that is visited on anybody who isn't a [believer]”.

Journalism
Chapman has had articles published in Harper's magazine, on the Huffington Post and Slate.com. He has written widely on the creation-evolution controversy in the US, particularly the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District,. He has also written about atheism, gay rights , politics and environmental issues.

Science advocacy
Matthew Chapman founded Science Debate 2008 in 2007 (now simply Science Debate). His co-founders were fellow screenwriter Shawn Lawrence Otto, CEO of the organization, science writer Chris Mooney, marine biologist and science blogger Sheril Kirshenbaum, noted physicist Lawrence Krauss, and philosopher Austin Dacey. The organization was formed to persuade the presidential candidates to hold a debate on science and technology issues. Science Debate received support from "28 Nobel laureates, 108 college and university presidents, the National Academy of Sciences and a long list of artists, writers and industry leaders". Although the candidates did not agree to the two televised debates proposed by Science Debate 2008, both Obama and McCain, and Obama and Romney in 2012, did participate in an online written version, providing detailed responses to the "14 Top Science Questions Facing America," a list crowdsourced by the organization's members and submitted to 15 of America's leading science organizations. When ScienceDebate.org published their answers they made 850 million media impressions in 2008, and got more mainstream media coverage in 2012. For the 2016 election, Science Debate is partnering with the National Geographic Channel and Arizona State University to put on a live televised debate. On an interview for Point of Inquiry, Matthew Chapman said that “It’s absurd not to be talking about the most important issues that are going to affect people and their children”.

Chapman has also been a speaker at The Amaz!ng Meeting 6, a skeptical conference, in 2008, and he regularly participates in a semi-monthly puclic lecture series for the New York City Skeptics, a nonprofit organization that promotes critical thinking and science education.

Support for atheism
Chapman grew up in a "family that went to church, and attended schools that mandated daily prayers", but reading the Bible as a child "shocked [him] out of Christianity". He then considered himself an agnostic and wrote that he became an atheist after covering the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. Chapman has publicly spoken out in defense of atheism at the 13th annual Atheist Alliance International Convention in 2007, and in Chris Johnson's 2015 film "A Better Life: An Exploration of Joy & Meaning in a World Without God". He has participated in a 2011 Intelligence Squared debate with philosopher A.C. Grayling supporting the motion 'The World Would Be Better Off Without Religion'. He has also been a guest speaker at the Sunday Assembly, a non-religious gathering, in New York City in 2013.

Awards and honors
Chapman won the Sitges Film Festival award for best film for "Heart of Midnight" in 1989, and the CableACE Award in 1995 for the TV movie "Citizen X".

Background
Matthew Chapman's mother Clare was the daughter of the philosophy professor and author Francis Cornford and poet Frances Cornford (née Darwin), and through his maternal grandmother he is a great-great grandson of Charles 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.

This guy has a LOT of history.

Early life
(great notes) Darwin pressure, mother alcoholic, parents’ marriage strained, left school at 15

Personal life
He is married to documentary film producer Denise Dumont, a Brazilian with whom he has a daughter, Anna Bella Charles Darwin Teixeira Chapman, who has chosen atheism, and a stepson, Diogo Marzo, who lives in Australia and hosts a radio show on politics called, "Think About It." Matthew Chapman currently lives in New York.

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)