Fame & Fortune: NBC's Mike Leonard Windfall buys freedom, happiness and a new banjo By Larry Getlen • Bankrate.com

Mike Leonard has lived a charmed life.

Hired in 1980 to file occasional reports for NBC's "Today" show, he soon developed a knack for quirky stories that he would find on his own. Soon it was decided that instead of being assigned stories by his producer, he would just bring in his own stories. It was also decided that instead of his working out of NBC's facilities, he would function as a separate entity, buying his own editing equipment and rarely even visiting the "Today" show set.

Bankrate spoke to Leonard about the perils -- and profit -- of traveling with family.

Bankrate: Your book is about spending one month cooped up in an RV with your parents. How did you survive that?

Mike Leonard: I survived it by knowing what I was getting into. The things that annoy me about my parents are the things that annoy everybody about their parents, or somebody in their group. They always fall back on the same script -- "the rich are getting richer," or, "life stinks," or his gall bladder operation. I decided I wasn't going to let that happen -- that I was going to hijack those conversations and be the one asking all the questions. I've always found that to work. You have to get your parents, or whoever it is, on a track that's interesting. I asked really pointed questions all the time about: "What kind of shoes did you wear as a kid?" or, "Who was the biggest jerk in the neighborhood?" or "Who scared you?" Pretty soon, all these interesting things came out.

Bankrate: Were there ever moments when you regretted your decision to take this trip?

Mike Leonard: My mom is a fearful backseat driver, so a couple of times I had to threaten to take her to the airport and send her home. I don't think I got to the point where I regretted taking the trip, but there were points where my patience was tried. We crashed one of the RVs 30 minutes after we started and had it patched up to the tune of $3,000 and kept going. Everything else was a bit minor after that.

Bankrate: I can't imagine a trip like that is cheap. All in all, what did the trip cost you?

Mike Leonard: I think between 15 and 20 thousand, around 15, not counting the mishap, which was 3 thousand. We did stay at a few hotels along the way just to give my parents a break, but mostly we slept in the RVs.

Bankrate: $15,000 -- does that count the cost of the RV?

Mike Leonard: That's counting the RV rental. These are really expensive rigs. To buy the one we rented would be a couple hundred thousand dollars. Also, I asked three of my grown kids and a daughter-in-law to go with me. Together we have a small video production company, and so we shut down the company. So it cost them their income. Economically, that was pretty disastrous to my kids. I knew that going in, but for some strange reason, I knew we had to take the trip, and it ended up being economically really good. But I didn't know that at the front end, because I didn't have a book or movie in mind when we left.

Bankrate: When you say economically really good, you mean for them, too, not just for you?

Mike Leonard: Yeah. They didn't know it, but when I got the advance from Random House, I talked to my wife, and we decided to split the first payment of the advance and give it all to them.

Bankrate: How much was the advance on the book?

Mike Leonard: A million dollars. I'm not a financial person, and when I went on the journey, I didn't have a book in mind. A literary agent named Jane Dystel had called me about 20 years ago and asked if I would like to write a book based on what I wrote for the "Today" show, but I wasn't interested at the time. For 20 years she sent me a Christmas card, and I would send one back. The one I sent that year, Christmas 2003, I think, said, "I'm just about to get in an RV and take my crazy parents on one last lap around the country for a month." She called me as soon as she got it and said, "That's your book." When I got back from the journey, Jane kept calling me about writing a book proposal. I eventually did it and finished it in August 2004 and sent it off to her.
I never asked about money. My wife asked, "If somebody takes it, will they pay you an advance?" I said, "Yeah, I'm sure." She said, "How much?" I said, "I don't know, maybe $10,000. I have no idea what they pay." So when Jane got the manuscript, she didn't say much to me, she didn't say it was great or anything like that, but she sent 20 copies out on a Monday. By Thursday of that week, 10 publishers had called. She said, "We're going to have to have a book auction -- this is going to be pretty good." I still didn't ask about money. A day later, she said Random House didn't want to go to auction, they wanted to make a play, and they settled on a million dollar advance. When I told my wife, she was, of course, shocked. I didn't know how that played out, and they explained to me that you get a quarter up front, $250,000 when you hand in the manuscript, $250,000 when the hardcover book comes out and $250,000 a year later. Around that same time, Jane said, "We have to talk about the movie rights," and I said, "What movie rights? How do the movie people know about this?" She said the word spreads when a property gets sold. Next thing I know, Disney buys the movie rights for $115,000, and the whole price was $800,000.

Bankrate: How does that work?

Mike Leonard: It's $800,000 for the movie rights, but they pay you an option, I think it was $115,000, that means they've secured the rights to that movie. They don't have to do anything for 18 months, and if they don't do anything, they have the right of first refusal to do another option. Then, when that happens, if they don't do that, then you have the property again. Once they start principal photography, then they have to pay you the rest.