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
Mishima Island, Yamaguchi Mishima Island, Yamaguchi Mishima, , is an island in the Hagi Archipelago, in Yamaguchi Prefecture in the Chūgoku region of south-western Honshu, Japan. It lies in the Sea of Japan, approximately from Hagi. It has a surface area of approximately , and a population of 829 in 458 households. The Battle of Tsushima between Russian and Japanese forces took place near the island of Mishima on 27–28 May 1905, during the Russo-Japanese War. Nikolai Nebogatov surrendered to the Japanese on 28 May, and his remaining ships were taken. One of these, the "Admiral Seniavin", was renamed "Mishima" when commissioned into