Matthew’s writing and ghost writing has been honored by the Academy Awards, the Writers Guild of America and the International Documentary Association.

His films have been featured at film festivals like Sundance, Tribeca, Toronto, and Vienna.

His science fiction writing has been developed by X-Men and Wolverine producers, Amazon Studios and Kuku FM, India’s #1 podcast company

His talks and short films have reached millions of people online, advocating for the human values taught and shared by the world’s great traditions.

Matthew is the writer, director, editor, and producer of documentary films which have made over 100 “best of” lists, earned an Oscar nomination, festival and writing awards from the Writer’s Guild of America and the International Documentary Association.

His particular expertise is complex projects, e.g. films with 100’s of hours of footage, converting dense and disparate material into an experience that’s relatable, immediate and visceral.

A formative part of social media culture 2015.

Matthew created some of the most-watched videos of the Bernie 2016 campaign including writing-directing Bernie’s biopic with Mark Ruffalo.

In 2017 he launched a series of viral videos on democracy and human values, and an award winning comedy series with his wife April Bowlby Cooke (Doom Patrol, Two and a Half Men, Drop Dead Diva) satirizing modern America.

After graduating with a BA in Film, magna cum laude, from Pitzer College in 1996, Matthew needed a “waiter job” to pay the rent while writing spec screenplays and auditioning - so he built websites in his garage in Culver City, CA.

His first major client was Capitol Records making websites for the Beach Boys and Grand Funk Railroad.

That led to building the first single-field search engine (before Google), Rampt.com.

Rampt earned a Best of the Web Design Award from Print Magazine in 2000 and an investment partnership with Intel, Time-Warner and AOL.

It was the first website with an interactive advertising model, (sorry!) boasted record-breaking click-through rates, and a patented method of organizing content to expand a user’s experience rather than just target it.

After the dot-com crash of 2000, Matthew founded a boutique ad agency where he served as Creative Director to clients like the legendary Hollywood company Ralph Edwards Productions, GM and the Make-A-Wish foundation.

Matthew taught Digital Arts at Otis College of Design before moving into filmmaking professionally.

Matthew has been writing music and playing guitar, bass and drums since he was 13.

He was the bass player in the 80s Chicago punk band “Angerhouse” with high school friends Erik Funk and Patrick Costello who later formed the Minneapolis pop-punk group “Dillinger Four” — featured in his film Survivors Guide to Prison.

Matthew composes original music for his films when time allows.