“Only up to a point, though,” Connell told me. “If the gap in the forest was too big, it had the opposite effect.” In those parts of the rain forest where loggers had cleared entire fields, where a huge storm had wiped out whole sections of the forest, or where a fire had spread too far, there was much less diversity, even decades later. If the trauma to the landscape was too great, only the hardiest trees or vines could survive.
Next, Connell looked at reefs along the Australian coast. Here, too, he found a similar pattern. In some places, there was a dizzying assortment of coral and seaweed living in close proximity while, just a few minutes by boat away, one species of fast-growing coral had dominated every square inch. The difference, Connell found, was the frequency and intensity of waves and storms. In those areas with high biodiversity, midsized waves and moderate storms came through occasionally. Alternately, in places with no waves or storms, just a handful of species dominated. Or, when waves were too powerful or storms came through too often, they would scrub the reef clean.
It seemed as if nature’s creative capacities depended on some kind of periodic disturbance—like a tree fall or an occasional storm—that temporarily upset the natural environment. But the disturbance couldn’t be too small or too big. It had to be just the right size. “Intermediate disturbances are critical,” Connell told me.
Within biology, this has become known as the intermediate disturbance hypothesis, which holds that “local species diversity is maximized when ecological disturbance is neither too rare nor too frequent.” There are other theories that explain diversification in different ways, but the intermediate disturbance hypothesis has become a staple of biology.
“The idea is that every habitat is colonized by a variety of species, but over time one or a few tend to win out,” said Steve Palumbi, the director of Stanford’s marine station in Monterey, California. This is called “competitive exclusion.” If there are no disturbances to the environment, then the strongest species become so entrenched that nothing else can compete. Similarly, if there are massive, frequent disturbances, only the hardiest species grow back. But if there are intermediate disturbances, then numerous species bloom, and nature’s creative capacities flourish.
Human creativity, of course, is different from biological diversity. It’s an imprecise analogy to compare a falling tree in the Australian rain forest to a change in management at Disney. Let’s play with the comparison for a moment, though, because it offers a valuable lesson: When strong ideas take root, they can sometimes crowd out competitors so thoroughly that alternatives can’t prosper. So sometimes the best way to spark creativity is by disturbing things just enough to let some light through.
“The thing I noticed, when I first became a director, was that the change was subtle, but at the same time, very real,” Jennifer Lee told me. “When you’re a writer, there’s certain things you know a film needs, but you’re just one voice. You don’t want to seem defensive or presumptuous because other people have just as many suggestions and your job is to integrate everyone’s ideas.
“A director, though, is in charge. So when I became a director, I felt like I had to listen even more closely to what everyone was saying because that was my job now. And as I listened, I started picking up on things I hadn’t noticed before.”
Some of the animators, for instance, were pushing to use the blizzard at the end of the film as a metaphor for the characters’ internal turmoil. Others thought they should withhold any foreshadowing, to make the ending a surprise. As a writer, Lee had viewed those suggestions as devices. But now she understood people were asking for clarity, for a direction in which every choice—from the weather on-screen to choices about what is hidden or revealed—reflected a core idea.
A few months after Lee’s promotion, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, the songwriter, sent Lee an email. They had been speaking almost every day for a year at this point. They talked at night and sent each other texts during the day. Their friendship didn’t end when Lee became a director. But it changed a little bit.
Kristen was riding a school bus, chaperoning her second-grade daughter on a class trip to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, when she pulled out her phone and typed a message to Lee.
“Yesterday I went to therapy,” she wrote. She and her therapist had discussed the Frozen team members’ differing opinions about how the movie should end. They had talked about Lee’s ascension to director. “I was discussing dynamics and politics and power and all that bullshit and who do you listen to and how do [you] start,” she typed. “Then she asked me, ‘Why do you do it?’
“And after parsing out the money and ego stuff, it all really comes down to the fact that I have things I need to share about the human experience,” Anderson-Lopez typed. “I want to take what I have learned or felt or experienced and help people by sharing it.
“What is it about this frozen story that you, Bobby and I HAVE to say?” Kristen asked. “For me, it has something to do with not getting frozen in roles that are dictated by circumstances beyond our control.”
Lee herself was the perfect example of this. Lee had come to Disney as a new film school graduate with little besides a young daughter and a fresh divorce and student loans, and had quickly become a screenwriter at one of the biggest studios on earth. Now she was the first female director in Disney’s history. Kristen and Bobby were examples of people escaping their circumstances, as well. They had fought for years to build the careers they wanted, even when everyone said it was ridiculous to hope they could support themselves by writing songs. Now, here they were, with hit Broadway shows and the life they had always hoped for.
To earn Frozen’s ending, Kristen said, they had to find a way to share that sense of possibility with the audience.
“What is it for you?” Kristen typed.
Lee replied twenty-three minutes later. It was seven in the morning in Los Angeles.
“I love your therapist,” she wrote, “and you.” All the different members of the Frozen team had their own ideas for the movie. Everyone on the story trust had become locked into their own concept of how the film should end. But none of them fit together perfectly, Lee felt.
However, Frozen could have only one ending. Someone had to make a choice. And the right decision, Lee wrote, is that “fear destroys us, love heals us. Anna’s journey should be about learning what love is; it’s that simple.” At the end of the film, “when she sees her sister out on the fjords, she completes her arc by the ultimate act of true love: sacrificing your needs for someone else’s. LOVE is a greater force than FEAR. Go with love.”
Becoming a director forced Lee to see things differently—and that small jolt was enough to help her realize what the film needed, and to shift everyone else enough to agree with her.
Later that month, Lee sat down with John Lasseter.
“We need clarity,” she told him. “The core of this movie isn’t about good and evil, because that doesn’t happen in real life. And this movie isn’t about love versus hate. That’s not why sisters grow apart.
“This is a movie about love and fear. Anna is all about love, and Elsa is all about fear. Anna has been abandoned, so she throws herself into the arms of Prince Charming because she doesn’t know the difference between real love and infatuation. She has to learn that love is about sacrifice. And Elsa has to learn that you can’t be afraid of who you are, you can’t run away from your own powers. You have to embrace your strengths.
“That’s what we need to do with the ending, show that love is stronger than fear.”
“Say it again,” Lasseter told her.
Lee described her theory of love versus fear again, explaining how Olaf, the snowman, embodies innocent love while Prince Hans demonstrates that love without sacrifice isn’t really love at all; it’s narcissism.
“Say it again,” Lasseter said.
Lee said it again.