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 the emperor. He succeeded only in irritating the soldiers, and was mocked and jeered. He finished his planned speech after a few minutes, returned to the commandant's office and performed seppuku. The assisting "kaishakunin" duty at the end of this ritual (to decapitate Mishima) had been assigned to "Tatenokai" member Masakatsu Morita, who was unable to properly perform the task. After several failed attempts at severing Mishima's head, he allowed another "Tatenokai" member, Hiroyasu Koga, to behead Mishima. Morita then knelt and stabbed himself in the abdomen and Koga again performed the "kaishakunin" duty. This coup is called in Japan.