Here are a few tips for photographing meteor showers.  

• Pick a section of the sky. You'll get the longest meteor trails if you aim about 60° away from the radiant.
• Put your camera on a tripod and set the shutter speed to "Bulb" mode. 
• Use a shutter release cable. This will keep your images steady.
• Take some long duration pictures. If you don't want star trails, keep your exposures to no longer than about 15 seconds with a 50mm lens. If you do want star trails (they can look pretty cool), open the shutter for a few minutes. The accompanying image shows some star trailing, and looks pretty sweet. If a fireball happens to go through your field of view, immediately end that exposure. 
• Use ASA400 speed film or faster
• Use a relatively wide angle lens... Zoom lenses will reduce the number of meteors photographed. On the other hand, if you do catch one, it could look awesome
  
  
• Got a video camera? Mount it on a tripod and see what you get. 

Checkout this awesome 1998 Leonid Fireball captured by Jurgen Rendtel. The photo was taken with a fish-eye lens on Ilford Delta 400 film. The exposure time was 10 minutes. The maximum brightness of the fireballs was about -8. This is almost as bright as the full moon!