Billboard Mike47,000 entries
Mike MacKay
“I Need A Home”
Mike MacKay entered the contest 47,000 times. A stocky, bearded loudmouth who never met a room he didn’t want to own. His wife Linda just wanted him to come home. Mike wanted to be famous.
Based on a true story
Allentown
Three men. A billboard. And the American Dream.
A feature film about the greatest radio contest of all time
1982
Allentown, PA
- 18%Mortgage rates
- 16%Unemployment
- 13.5%Inflation
- 12MOut of work
- $1.5BSteel losses
For the people of Allentown, the American Dream wasn’t slipping away.
It was already gone.
One billboard.Three men.Last one down wins a home.
WSAN 1470 AMOfficial entry
You’ll Love to Live With Us
Tell us why you deserve a shot, in 25 words or less.
NamePhone
Life up there
A tent, a telephone, and twenty square feet to call home.
Three tents, 25 feet above Route 22. One tent each. One telephone each. Everything else came up in a bucket. Morning coffee at the rail. A haircut on the platform. Winter, out of the tent. Back up the ladder after a day in court. The view from the road.
Archive footage: Billboard Boys, a film by Pat Taggart, Owl Town Productions
The Contestants
The Quiet Warrior4,004 entries
Ron Kistler
“Due to the high cost of living, I may never be able to purchase a home of my own.”
Ron Kistler was 25, a house painter who picked up trucking shifts when he could find them. Quiet. Stubborn. He had a piece of land, a girl named Sue, and no way to build a life with either one.
The TelepathEntered by his mother
Dalton Young
“I could live indefinitely on a billboard.”
His mother entered him while he slept. Dalton was 22, an Army veteran fresh out of Korea, unemployed, doing karate in his underwear in his childhood bedroom. He didn’t volunteer for this.
The Station
WSAN Radio
The Marketer
Mike Krajsa
“Part publicity stunt, part social experiment, part act of accidental cruelty.”
Harold Fulmer’s right-hand man at WSAN. When Rick Musselman of the station brought in the idea of a living billboard, Krajsa and Fulmer built it out. He wore the fanciest suit an AM radio salary could buy, and when it spiraled out of control, he was the one who had to defend it on national television.
The McMillionaire
Harold Fulmer
“He didn’t believe in handouts. He believed in hand-ups.”
Harold Fulmer drove a 1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III, wore a ten-gallon hat, and owned WSAN. A self-made millionaire who believed these three men should earn their home the same way he earned his.
Nobody expected it to last.
We have been
living here forDays
living here forDays
Sept. 20, 1982June 7, 1983
Day 1
Three men climb a billboard above Route 22.
Day 4
Billy Joel releases “Allentown.”
Day 15
Nobody comes down. The station figured it would be over by now.
Day 81
The Wall Street Journal puts the story on the front page.
Day 97
Christmas on the billboard.
Day 145
A record blizzard. Three strangers huddle in one tent to survive.
Day 185
Dalton Young is arrested and removed.
Day 203
Whitehall Township sends them a tax bill. That month, Phil Donahue takes up their case.
Day 260
Two men remain. One makes a decision.
Day 261
It ends the way no one expected.
“You can tell the story of the United States through that billboard contest.”
The Film
A Rust Belt Fairy Tale.
In 1982, a radio competition in recession-hit Allentown offered desperate locals the chance to win a home by living on a billboard. Braving the worst winter in forty years, a media circus and police entrapment, three blue collar men would spend 261 days on top of that billboard fighting for the American Dream.
A film that lives in the space between absurdity and heartbreak, where the biggest laughs come from the most desperate circumstances and the most moving moments sneak up on you sideways.
A comedy about survival. A drama about dignity. And a love letter to the people who build their lives with whatever they’ve got.
- Genre
- Comedy-drama
- Setting
- Allentown, Pennsylvania, 1982
- Source
- Based on a true story
A note from the director
I’ve been developing Allentown for several years now, and the thing that keeps pulling me back is how much this story feels like right now. In 1982, three ordinary guys climbed a billboard because it was the only path to something most Americans take for granted: a place to call home.
That’s the story I want to tell. Not a period piece about the ’80s, but a film about what happens when the ground falls out from under you and the only direction left is up. Literally.
Ze’ev WaismannDirector / Co-Writer
The Company
directed by
written by
produced by