People who think their life’s story is worth $150,000 might sound a little egotistical, but one business executive who paid it explained, “My goal was to leave a legacy for my family.” Besides, when the interview is concluded, he received an iPad, a memory stick and a Blu-ray version of the interview and many of those items probably won’t be obsolete for months to come.
As a professional journalist, I think being paid $150,000 to interview someone is a wonderful idea and I’d be glad to conduct one. My first question probably would be, “Why are you paying $150,000 to leave a legacy for your family when your wife could pretty much do the same thing for free with her smartphone?”
But as a producer of numerous descendants, I’m not sure how interested they would be in watching a video of me talking about myself after I’m gone, because they don’t seem all that interested in hearing me talk about myself while I’m here. But maybe after I’m gone I’ll seem a lot more interesting.
Admittedly, my situation is a bit different, because the four books I’ve had published are filled with stories about my life and all my descendants have copies of them. Someday they may get around to actually reading one. Plus, I’ve made copies of my recipe collection and put them on CDs, so they can duplicate them. Or, at least, help them remember why they begged to eat at McDonald’s when they were kids.
Maybe I’ve misjudged my descendants, though. Perhaps after I’m gone, one of my kids will say to his or her kids, “Who wants to watch ‘Finding Dory?’” and my grandkids will shout, “No, no, we want to watch that video of Grandpa D.L. talking about the ancient days.”
But, even if I had the money to pay for a video of me being interviewed by Ben Mankiewicz, I don’t think I’d do it.
I’m pretty sure the legacy my descendants would prefer would be the $150,000.
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