Leonard Schrader and Weisman's experience with Brazil led them to develop "Kiss of the Spider Woman" together. Schrader's screenplay adaptation, based on the avant-garde novel by Argentinian Manuel Puig, earned him an Academy Award nomination in 1986. (It also earned William Hurt an Academy Award for Best Actor.) Schrader met renowned Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima while living in Japan. For a decade after the author's ritual suicide in 1970, Schrader pursued the rights to Mishima's life, and working with his wife Chieko and brother Paul, he co-wrote the Japanese-language bio-pic "" executive-produced in 1984 by George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, and
Yukio Mishima He also had roles in films including "Yukoku" (directed by himself, 1966), "Black Lizard" (directed by Kinji Fukasaku, 1968) and "Hitokiri" (directed by Hideo Gosha, 1969). He also sang the theme song for "Afraid to Die" (lyrics by himself; music by Shichirō Fukazawa). Mishima was featured as a photo model in "Ba-ra-kei: Ordeal by Roses" by Eikoh Hosoe, as well as in "Young Samurai: Bodybuilders of Japan" and "Otoko: Photo Studies of the Young Japanese Male" by Tamotsu Yatō. American author Donald Richie gave a short lively account of Mishima, dressed in a loincloth and armed with a sword, posing