Why Paul Schrader’s ‘Mishima’ Wouldn’t Exist Without George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola

“ Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters ,” which IndieWire ranked as the second-best film of the 1980s , is considered by many as writer/director Paul Schrader’s masterpiece. When Schrader was a guest on the Toolkit podcast to look back at the 1985 film, as part of a Metrograph Members Only Screening series, he made clear it was the film he himself was most proud of, in part because it was a miracle he ever got it made.

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There were several seemingly impossible hurdles to Schrader realizing his vision for “Mishima.” The idea of an American film director making a Japanese language film in Japan, with a largely local crew and cast, was undoubtedly a hard sell. Making things considerably harder was the fact that Schrader’s subject, writer Yukio Mishima, was a hero to the Japanese right-wing due to his steadfast belief Japan had shamefully sacrificed its national identity and government to the West following World War II. It was a cause Mishima would ultimately sacrifice his life for in 1971 when he committed seppuku at a Tokyo military base after leading a small militia to take the garrison’s commandant hostage. For the Japanese conservative wing in the 1980s, the idea of an American making a film about its hero was an outrage.

It was against this backdrop, that Schrader faced his first major obstacle: Getting his subject’s widow, Yōko, to give him the rights her husband’s novels. As Schrader explained on the podcast, to tell his story of “Mishima,” he would need to enter the writer’s fictional world.

“I felt that if you’re going to get into a writer’s fantasy life, you have to get into his work because that’s the place where a writer really lives. Even one as flamboyant and theatrical as Mishima still lives inside his work,” said Schrader.

In Schrader’s vision for the unconventional biopic, each of the four chapters of Mishima’s life is anchored by a theatrical-like adaptation of one of his novels, but getting those rights, he assumed, would be impossible. At the time, Schrader’s old friend Tom Luddy , who ran Francis Ford Coppola ’s Zoetrope studios, had been talking to Schrader about how they could help.

“Tom wanted to get Zoetrope involved and Francis was going to Japan anyway. I knew I had to get the rights from the widow,” said Schrader. “Francis was coming off from the international fame of ‘The Godfather’ and he took Yōko Mishima to dinner and courted her in a way that only Francis can, and she agreed to let Zoetrope have the rights. I don’t think I could have gotten them on my own.”

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Schrader then secured half of the film’s financing from Japanese producers, but it was at this point political pressure started to mount. Mishima’s widow would even ask for the rights to the novels back. Schrader knew he would need to get the rest of the money from outside of Japan, but he also knew he would need an American distributor for the film to be viable. American studios, though, had little interest in the unconventional Japanese-language film.

“That’s when Francis and Tom said, ‘We should bring in George [Lucas], because he was riding high with ‘Star Wars,’” said Schrader. “At the time, Lucas had been publicly saying negative things about Warner Brothers. He was angry at the way they had released THX [1138].”

Warner Brothers released a heavily edited version of Lucas’ first feature “THX 1138” in 1971. Following the success of “Star Wars” (1977), the studio re-released a restored version of the film, but with little fanfare and poor box office results.

“Warner’s [Chairman] Ted Ashley certainly didn’t want George Lucas saying those kind of things about WB, and so George went in there and said that he wanted Warner Brothers to pick up the other 50 percent [of “Mishima”] and make this with him, Francis, and me,” said Schrader. “And without even hearing too much more than that, Ashley said, ‘George, if we do this, will we be doing you a favor?’ And George said, ‘Yes.’ And so that’s how we got the other half of the money — essentially as Warner Brothers doing a favor [for] George Lucas, knowing full well that they were involved in a film that would have little commercial potential.”