In 2005, the competition was halted after one of the contestants broke into a nearby Kmart, took a shotgun from the sporting goods section, and committed suicide, which occurred during one of the breaks in the contest.
Director Robert Altman had planned to make a feature film based on this documentary, but died before the project could be realized.
When interviewed in Quentin Taratino/Jodie Whittaker/Nathaniel Rateliff (2020), director Quentin Tarantino recommended this documentary as a go-to movie.
The documentary was made with less money than the value of the truck; which according to one of the contestants, was $15,000.
In 2008, a lawsuit filed against Patterson Nissan of Longview, East Texas, by Chalala Gutierrez, the widowed wife of the contestant who shot himself during the 2005 competition, Richard Thomas Vega, was settled. In her lawsuit, she alleged that her husband's and other contestants' stress and sleep deprivation was like "brainwashing" and said the dealership failed to provide a safe environment for contestants who "temporarily lost their sanity."