Literary management · Life-story rights · Entertainment counsel · Est. 2009

Mom's
Basement
Management

Representation for authors, screenwriters, and the people whose true stories become books, films, series, and podcasts.

Send a query Submission Release @MattValentinas

Queries are opened only with a signed Submission Release attached — PDF · Word. Sign it, then send it with your query →

MBM · EST. 2009
Mom's Basement Management · Representation · Life-story rights · Flat fee

IP, Life-Story Rights, Podcast, Book & Docuseries Consultation · $495

If you have a true story, a book, a podcast, or a docuseries idea — or you hold life-story rights, your own or someone else's — the smartest first step is understanding what you actually have and how the market for it works. In a private, one-hour phone call with Matthew Valentinas, you'll discuss how Mom's Basement Management may represent you; the IP strategy for your material — how your intellectual property can be protected, positioned, and moved across formats, from page to podcast to screen; how your rights could be developed, packaged, and brought to market; and how that process works from first conversation to signed deal.

There is no obligation and nothing you need to prepare. Many clients have resulted from this first call — people who were unsure what their story was worth, cautious about the industry, and glad they asked. You'll come away knowing where you stand, what your options are, and what a smart next move looks like.

Payment must be received in advance of the phone call and is nonrefundable. Once payment is received, a call time will be confirmed.
PAYMENT — Venmo: @Matthew-Valentinas · PayPal: MatthewValentinas@gmail.com · Zelle (via your banking app): MatthewValentinas@gmail.com · Bank transfer details on request

Mom's Basement Management · Flat fee · Paid in advance

Screenplay Coverage & Other Services

Professional script coverage from a manager and entertainment attorney who reads material the way buyers do. One price, no menus — and every option includes a phone call.

  • $395Coverage. Full script coverage plus a phone call of up to twenty minutes. Delivered no later than ten business days.
  • $495Rush coverage. The same coverage and call, delivered no later than three business days.
  • $895Coverage plus notes. Coverage together with written notes on the screenplay, emailed to you and discussed on a call of up to one hour.

All services are prepaid and nonrefundable. Turnaround time begins once payment has been received and confirmed.
PAYMENT — Venmo: @Matthew-Valentinas · PayPal: MatthewValentinas@gmail.com · Zelle (via your banking app): MatthewValentinas@gmail.com · Bank transfer details on request

Also of counsel at

Sennott Williams & Rogers LLP

"Helping creators, innovators and businesses realize their ambitions."

Matthew is Of Counsel at Sennott Williams & Rogers LLP, a Boston firm at the intersection of media, entertainment, and technology law. There he handles transactional entertainment matters for authors, screenwriters, directors, producers, production companies, publishers, comedians, broadcasters, actors, podcasters, and radio and television personalities — production counsel, book-to-film agreements, publishing contracts, talent agreements, financing, and corporate filings.

Legal services → Matt at Sennott Williams & Rogers

  • Film & Television
  • Publishing
  • Copyright & Trademark
  • Music
  • Digital & Internet
  • Corporate
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Data Privacy
Firm
sennottwilliams.com/matthew-valentinas
Bio
Matthew Valentinas, Of Counsel
Office
88 Broad Street, Suite 503
Boston, MA 02110
Phone
617.303.1663
Email
Matt@sennottwilliams.com
Legal counsel · Flat fee

One-Hour Consultation · $495

For many artists, the most practical first step is an hour on the phone with an entertainment attorney. A one-hour consultation lets you walk through your specific project — what it is, where it stands, and what kind of help it may need — before committing to anything more.

You may email questions or concerns in advance to Matt@sennottwilliams.com, along with the times you're available, if you'd like the call to follow a focused agenda — but it's not required. Once the $495 consultation fee is received, Attorney Valentinas will confirm a convenient time for your call. Afterward, you can engage further services or take time to work things through on your own. For artists on a limited budget, this single hour is often the most economical way to find out what you can do yourself — and where an entertainment attorney can help you moving forward.

The consultation fee is payable in advance and is nonrefundable.
PAYMENT — Venmo: @Matthew-Valentinas · PayPal: MatthewValentinas@gmail.com · Zelle (via your banking app): MatthewValentinas@gmail.com · Bank transfer details on request

What we do

Stories with a paper trail

Management

Authors & screenwriters

Submission services, screenplay and manuscript coverage, and hands-on work shaping the book proposal — so your material reaches publishers with the strongest possible case for yes. Material is positioned with publishers, production companies, networks, and studios.

Rights

Life stories, estates, narrative nonfiction

Sourcing and representing life-story rights, estate rights, and undervalued or undiscovered intellectual property — biography, true crime, and history that can carry a broader commercial market.

Mom's Basement Media Inc.

Packaging & producing

The production arm. Mom's Basement Media packages and executive-produces films, series, documentaries, and podcasts built on rights the company has acquired or represents.

The manager

Matthew Valentinas

Matthew Valentinas, entertainment lawyer and literary manager
Entertainment lawyer · Literary manager · Executive producer

Matthew Valentinas is an entertainment lawyer and literary manager. He has worked in creative and business roles in the entertainment industry in New York and Los Angeles since 1995 — with talent agents and producers, covering acquisitions for an independent film distributor, and in business affairs for international sales agents and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

He returned to his native Boston in 2009, founded the Law Office of Matthew Valentinas, and established Mom's Basement Management to manage writers, directors, and producers. His focus is sourcing and exploiting life rights, nonfiction stories (including true crime), and undervalued intellectual property with commercial upside — then positioning that material with publishers, production companies, networks, and studios, and packaging and producing motion pictures, television, documentaries, and podcasts with independent financing.

As a producer, he conceived and produced the documentary An Open Secret (2014, dir. Amy Berg). He speaks regularly at colleges, film festivals, and law schools, and has been interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter, NPR, and The Boston Globe.

  • EducationBFA, Film & Television, NYU Tisch School of the Arts (1996)
  • LawJD, Suffolk University Law School (2000) — corporate finance & IP
  • AdmittedCommonwealth of Massachusetts; U.S. District Court, D. Mass.
  • AlsoOf Counsel, Sennott Williams & Rogers LLP; formerly affiliated agent, Kneerim & Williams
Management clients get a manager who can also read the deal. Legal clients get counsel who knows how the material actually gets sold.
Clients & projects

The docket

Partial roster, drawn from public records. Additional clients and current projects are listed with their permission.

Books available for adaptation

The Rights Shelf

Film and television rights represented by Mom's Basement Management. Status is current as of this posting — email Matt for availability, options, and materials.

Unpublished & unproduced works · Rights available

Diamonds in the Rough

Great material, teed up for the right producing team: manuscripts awaiting a publisher; pitch concepts for film, television, and docuseries; sizzle reels and audio and video teasers for projects in development; and prior articles and source material tied to unproduced works. Full material is sent on request — and if something catches your eye, it can move quickly.

Matt's recommendations

Read, watch, listen

From the MBM shelf

Clients in the news

Press & mentions

Live coverage, straight from the wire. Each name below opens today's Google News results for that client — always current, updated by Google around the clock.

On X

@MattValentinas

Matt posts on X about the business of film, publishing, and true crime — what's getting made, who's getting hired, and what's worth your evening. A few recent posts are here; the full feed lives on X.

Follow @MattValentinas on X

Latest posts

PBS' Frontline makes new hires including Disney's Marjon Javadi — via @Deadline

View on X →

Why Hollywood isn't collapsing.

View on X →

Best writing & acting on an HBO show since the original True Detective series.

View on X →

Northeastern climbs in U.S. News ranking — well deserved. In the years I have been talking there I have seen amazing growth in the students & the campus. via @BosBizJournal

View on X →

Definitely my favorite directing shot ever. And he was doing this with the basics only. Amazing.

View on X →
Contact

Get in touch

Email Matt@MomsBasementManagement.com

Clicking opens your email app with the address filled in. No email app on this device? and use whatever you like.

Phone
617.303.1663
Mail
88 Broad Street, Suite 503, Boston, MA 02110
Submissions
  1. Download and sign the Submission Release below. A signed Release is a condition of consideration.
  2. Use the query form: a logline, a short synopsis, a sentence on who you are, and the signed Release attached. Full scripts and manuscripts as a single PDF.
  3. True stories: say who owns the rights, and whether the principals are on board.
  4. No query is opened until the signed Release is verified. Every verified query is read. Expect a reply when there's a fit.
Before you send a script

Submission Release

Mom's Basement Management reads unsolicited screenplays, manuscripts, and proposals only with a signed Submission Release and completed Schedule A. Download it, sign it (electronic signatures are fine), and attach it to your query. Queries without a signed Release are not opened.

On the marquee

Matt's Favorite 100 (or So) Films

In no particular order · titles link to IMDb

  1. 01Goodfellas
  2. 02Apocalypse Now
  3. 03Full Metal Jacket
  4. 04Dr. Strangelove
  5. 05Saving Private Ryan
  6. 06Animal House
  7. 07The Departed
  8. 08Star Wars
  9. 09Jaws
  10. 10Caddyshack
  11. 11Platoon
  12. 12Gone with the Wind
  13. 13The Wizard of Oz
  14. 14Cinema Paradiso
  15. 15Unforgiven
  16. 16The Deer Hunter
  17. 17Fallen
  18. 18Training Day
  19. 19Glory
  20. 20Gangs of New York
  21. 21Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  22. 22Rocky
  23. 23Casablanca
  24. 24Skyfall
  25. 25Mad Max
  26. 26Young Guns
  27. 27Tombstone
  28. 28Downfall
  29. 29Fury
  30. 30Patton
  31. 31Crown Vic
  32. 32Top Gun
  33. 33Enemy at the Gates
  34. 34Eastern Promises
  35. 35The Friends of Eddie Coyle
  36. 36The Godfather
  37. 37The Godfather Part II
  38. 38The Untouchables
  39. 39Once Upon a Time in America
  40. 40Sicario
  41. 41No Country for Old Men
  42. 42A Serious Man
  43. 43Barry Lyndon
  44. 44Ran
  45. 45Das Boot
  46. 46Letters from Iwo Jima
  47. 47The Wrestler
  48. 48Clear and Present Danger
  49. 49Predator
  50. 50Aliens
  51. 51Blade Runner
  52. 52State of Grace
  53. 53Barton Fink
  54. 54The Big Lebowski
  55. 55Gettysburg
  56. 56Adaptation
  57. 57Nightcrawler
  58. 58Stripes
  59. 59Kelly's Heroes
  60. 60Death Wish
  61. 61The Thing
  62. 62Escape from New York
  63. 63Any Given Sunday
  64. 64Wall Street
  65. 65Major League
  66. 66Star Trek: The Motion Picture
  67. 67Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
  68. 68Backdraft
  69. 69The Player
  70. 70The Shawshank Redemption
  71. 71White Men Can't Jump
  72. 72The Hunt for Red October
  73. 73Pulp Fiction
  74. 74Reservoir Dogs
  75. 75Casino
  76. 76The Last Samurai
  77. 77The Odyssey
  78. 78Memento
  79. 79Batman Begins
  80. 80Planet of the Apes (1968)
  81. 81Gladiator
  82. 82Black Hawk Down
  83. 83Planes, Trains and Automobiles
  84. 84Good Will Hunting
  85. 85American History X
  86. 86L.A. Confidential
  87. 87The Silence of the Lambs
  88. 88Old School
  89. 89Seven Samurai
  90. 90Groundhog Day
  91. 91An Open Secret
  92. 92Road House
  93. 93The Outsiders
  94. 94On the Waterfront
  95. 95War of the Worlds
  96. 96Shane
  97. 97Excalibur
  98. 98There Will Be Blood
  99. 99The Town
  100. 100All Quiet on the Western Front
Script coverage · Every Tuesday

Screenplay of the Week

Every Tuesday, Mom's Basement Management names the highest-scoring screenplay or teleplay read that week — Tuesday to Tuesday — out of everything that came through our query process that week. We'll post the title, the writer, and a one-line logline here, and may also share it on X to help give the writer's work a little extra visibility, even on scripts we aren't representing. Submitting your material to MBM means you're included automatically — see our Submission Release Agreement for the exact terms.

We can't promise a new Screenplay of the Week every single week — it depends entirely on what comes in, and we hold a quality bar — but we'll always do our best to spotlight something worth your attention from what we receive.

Week of October 6 – 12, 2026

Marrow's Point — "Chronic"

by J.R.S. Wilde (pen name of J.J. Michael Johnson)

When a pharmaceutical giant quietly rations the only drug keeping a chronic, blood-borne virus in check, a Boston caseworker and her sister on a storm-isolated island race a hurricane to get life-saving medication to patients the company has written off.

Past weeks

No script cleared our scoring threshold to be named Screenplay of the Week for every week in between — that's intentional; we'd rather skip a week than feature something we wouldn't stand behind.

Screenplay of the Year

Each year, starting January 1 and ending December 31, we track every script we read and, at year's end, name the single highest-scoring submission of the year our Screenplay of the Year. That writer will be offered a complimentary one-hour consultation with Mom's Basement Management, and the opportunity — entirely at the writer's option — to be represented by MBM, should they so choose.