The nearly successful efforts prevent release of the original Death in the West documentary and to silence the dying Marlboro cowboys is the background for a key scene in the movie Thank You for Smoking in which the anti-hero, with son/trainee in tow, goes uninvited to the house of one of the dying cowboys who has been actively campaigning against smoking on TV, and successfully buys the dying man's silence by spilling out on the floor a briefcase filled with a million dollars of payola and leaving it behind.
