Following the release of "The Rescuers Down Under" (1990), director Mike Gabriel was eager to collaborate with veteran Disney story artist Joe Grant on a follow-up project that was vastly different from the animated adventure film. During Thanksgiving weekend, 1990, Gabriel considered adapting Western legends such as Annie Oakley, Buffalo Bill, and Pecos Bill into animated films before conceiving of "Pocahontas". Pitching his idea at the Gong Show meeting, Gabriel wrote the title "Walt Disney's Pocahontas" on an image of Tiger Lily from "Peter Pan" (1953), to the back of which he taped a brief pitch that read "an Indian princess who is torn between her father's wishes to destroy the English settlers and her wishes to help them – a girl caught between her father and her people, and her love for the enemy." Coincidentally, Feature Animation president Peter Schneider had been developing an animated version of William Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet", and observed several similarities between his idea and Gabriel's "Pocahontas" pitch; Schneider recalled, "We were particularly interested in exploring the theme of 'If we don't learn to live with one another, we will destroy ourselves.'" Gabriel's pitch was quickly accepted, becoming the quickest story turnaround in Disney studio history.