The film was an adaptation of the American film A Place in the Sun, based on the novel An American Tragedy written by Theodore Dreiser.
Kumashiro also took breaks from the Roman Porno genre to direct mainstream films, beginning with Bitterness of Youth (1974), a story of student radicalism with similarities to Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925).
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Various assertions put forth in A Matter of Degree have been fiercely disputed by investigators who worked on the case, as well as by other writers, most notably Stewart O'Nan, who published The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy in 2001.
Theodore Dreiser is said to have written An American Tragedy in a Mediterranean-style estate in Tokeneke.