The coolest,Our cartierreplicawatche are high quality duplicates of original Cartier watches. dorkiest, sexiest, and most indelible celebrity power couple of the '90s reached the zenith of its "It"-ness on December 8, 1999, at a movie premiere held at the Mann Village Theatre in Westwood, Los Angeles. For Paul Thomas Anderson, it was the first public unveiling of Magnolia, his third feature, which he boasted to the Village Voice was "unquestionably the best film I will ever make.The Design Museum presents iconic French shoe designer jordanshoes," For Fiona Apple, the event might as well have also been held in honor of her own difficult magnum opus, her second album When the Pawn … , released one month prior and containing more than 400 characters in its full title, a sufficiently unwieldy complement to Magnolia's uncompromising and studio-defying three-plus hours of running time. Anderson and Apple had earned the right to be audacious with recent, highly successful breakthroughs — 1997's Oscar-nominated Boogie Nights for him, 1996's triple-platinum Tidal and the Alternative Nation staple "Criminal" for her. They became stars by asserting totally '90s outlaw artistic integrity while at the same time engaging in good old-fashioned showbiz sexual titillation. Now Paul and Fiona (Pauliona? Fionaul?) were ready for their full-on genius-in-their-own-time close-ups, risk of overexposure be damned. "The timing is so ridiculous," Anderson gushed about this shared moment of glory in Spin's second Fiona Apple cover story two months later. "I'd want to slap us."
Smarter than Johnny and Winona, less tragic than Kurt and Courtney, truer than Julia and Lyle — Paul and Fiona were ultimately just as doomed. But let's forget that for a second: Their timing really was so ridiculous that December night. A new millennium loomed little more than three weeks away, and the last beats of a decade they embodied (and then transcended) were being played out. You can see them sharing a limousine on the way to the premiere in a brief scene from That Moment, a 73-minute documentary tucked inside the second disc of the Magnolia DVD. It reminds me a little of that part in Eat the Document1 where Dylan and Lennon spend several minutes trying to outsnark each other in the back of a car tooling around London. Only Paul and Fiona aren't as chatty; they're just nervously sucking down cigarettes, trying to get their minds right before walking into the glare of what's waiting for them outside.
In retrospect, it might've been better for Paul and Fiona if they had just kept on driving and smoking that night. It never got any better for them afterward — not as a couple, anyway. The '90s weren't just coming to a close; the era was about to collapse right on top of them. Behavior that would've once made Paul and Fiona heroes — that did make them heroes, just a few years earlier — was now being pilloried in the media as so much ungrateful petulance. A New York Times Magazine profile of Anderson timed with the release of Magnolia chided the director for his hyperactive protectiveness of his work and paranoia over corporate interference. Writer Lynn Hirschberg zeroed in on Anderson's "reputation as a brat and a genius," and the article's sub-headline posed a pointed rhetorical question: "Thanks to the critical success of Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson has total control over his new three-hour movie, Magnolia. So why can't he calm down?"
Yeah, and what about that Fiona Apple? Why can't she calm down, too? People still ask her about that speech at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards — heretofore known as the "This World Is Bullshit" Address — even if it now seems pretty innocuous if not just plainly obvious, akin to observing that watching Jersey Shore might in fact not be an intellectually rewarding exercise. Had Apple name-dropped Maya Angelou and acted spiteful about winning a cheap-looking trophy in 1992, she would have been applauded for being realer than an ill-conceived bass guitar toss to Krist Novoselic's face. But all that alt-rock stuff was so passé in the late '90s; people just wanted to enjoy their budget surpluses and lack of wars and Sugar Ray singles. Fred Durst was all over MTV, not Kurt Cobain. Fiona, like Paul, had a Heaven's Gate mentality in what had suddenly become a Star Wars world. Now even Janeane Garofalo — the fallen symbol of bygone preach-the-truth alt-dom — was mocking her, in a bit from Denis Leary's 1997 album Lock N Load, which Rolling Stone's Chris Heath played for Apple during a 1998 interview seemingly for the purpose of making her cry.
People only wanted Paul and Fiona, the stupid jerks, to appreciate being rich and famous. But Paul and Fiona each had the same, different idea: They spent the '00s as Dylan and Lennon lived in the '70s, turning out the occasional masterwork but mostly just hiding out. Apple thought she might never make another record after When the Pawn … .It was only after frequent musical co-pilot Jon Brion — at the time heartbroken over a split with actress Mary Lynn Rajskub, one of the stars of Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love, for which he was composing the score — begged Apple to write new songs to give him something he could produce that a new album started to take shape. Apple and Brion started on Extraordinary Machine in 2002; after a change in producers and some well-publicized (if exaggerated) record-label wrangling, it came out three years later, six years after When the Pawn … , and restored Apple's reputation as a likably thorny artist. It was also her only record of the decade.
Anderson hit the wall after the public sniffed Punch-Drunk Love and opted not to take a drink. It had been his intention to write a conventional 90-minute comedy for Adam Sandler,shoes001 is the ultimate alternative furniture store, whom he met while tagging along with Apple when she performed on Saturday Night Live in 2000. What he actually made was more like a Fiona Apple song — a disorienting mishmash of bright melody and percussive dissonance, with a main character who was odd and oddly compelling and prone to oddly explosive, out-of-nowhere outbursts. Unfortunately for Punch-Drunk Love, Fiona Apple songs were still a few years away from returning to fashion, and the film died at the box office. Anderson made just one other film in the '00s, 2007's triumphant There Will Be Blood, as he settled into what appears to be a happy home life with his partner Maya Rudolph and their three kids.
Paul and Fiona have been apart romantically for more than 10 years. But their creative lives have once again achieved a sort of harmonic balance. In June, Apple released her first record in seven years, The Idler Wheel … ,Tree agatebeads has dark green foliage-like patterns on a white background, which would be my favorite album of 2012 if the year ended today. On Friday, Anderson's first film in five years, The Master, arrives in a handful of theaters, with a wide release set for next week. I've been looking forward to The Master for so long that it already seems like my favorite film of 2012 even though I haven't seen it yet.
Paul and Fiona may no longer be a unit, but they signify something similar: They are regarded as important, relevant artists responsible for creating essential documents of our culture, and yet they both exist in their own spheres somewhere outside of our culture. As media personalities, they both seem kind of unknowable, or at least untouchable. They drop in every half-decade or so, blow our minds, and then go back to their private lives. Caring about the work of Paul Thomas Anderson and/or Fiona Apple means respecting an invisible line between them and us. If you love them, you want them to never step out of the limousine.
Smarter than Johnny and Winona, less tragic than Kurt and Courtney, truer than Julia and Lyle — Paul and Fiona were ultimately just as doomed. But let's forget that for a second: Their timing really was so ridiculous that December night. A new millennium loomed little more than three weeks away, and the last beats of a decade they embodied (and then transcended) were being played out. You can see them sharing a limousine on the way to the premiere in a brief scene from That Moment, a 73-minute documentary tucked inside the second disc of the Magnolia DVD. It reminds me a little of that part in Eat the Document1 where Dylan and Lennon spend several minutes trying to outsnark each other in the back of a car tooling around London. Only Paul and Fiona aren't as chatty; they're just nervously sucking down cigarettes, trying to get their minds right before walking into the glare of what's waiting for them outside.
In retrospect, it might've been better for Paul and Fiona if they had just kept on driving and smoking that night. It never got any better for them afterward — not as a couple, anyway. The '90s weren't just coming to a close; the era was about to collapse right on top of them. Behavior that would've once made Paul and Fiona heroes — that did make them heroes, just a few years earlier — was now being pilloried in the media as so much ungrateful petulance. A New York Times Magazine profile of Anderson timed with the release of Magnolia chided the director for his hyperactive protectiveness of his work and paranoia over corporate interference. Writer Lynn Hirschberg zeroed in on Anderson's "reputation as a brat and a genius," and the article's sub-headline posed a pointed rhetorical question: "Thanks to the critical success of Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson has total control over his new three-hour movie, Magnolia. So why can't he calm down?"
Yeah, and what about that Fiona Apple? Why can't she calm down, too? People still ask her about that speech at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards — heretofore known as the "This World Is Bullshit" Address — even if it now seems pretty innocuous if not just plainly obvious, akin to observing that watching Jersey Shore might in fact not be an intellectually rewarding exercise. Had Apple name-dropped Maya Angelou and acted spiteful about winning a cheap-looking trophy in 1992, she would have been applauded for being realer than an ill-conceived bass guitar toss to Krist Novoselic's face. But all that alt-rock stuff was so passé in the late '90s; people just wanted to enjoy their budget surpluses and lack of wars and Sugar Ray singles. Fred Durst was all over MTV, not Kurt Cobain. Fiona, like Paul, had a Heaven's Gate mentality in what had suddenly become a Star Wars world. Now even Janeane Garofalo — the fallen symbol of bygone preach-the-truth alt-dom — was mocking her, in a bit from Denis Leary's 1997 album Lock N Load, which Rolling Stone's Chris Heath played for Apple during a 1998 interview seemingly for the purpose of making her cry.
People only wanted Paul and Fiona, the stupid jerks, to appreciate being rich and famous. But Paul and Fiona each had the same, different idea: They spent the '00s as Dylan and Lennon lived in the '70s, turning out the occasional masterwork but mostly just hiding out. Apple thought she might never make another record after When the Pawn … .It was only after frequent musical co-pilot Jon Brion — at the time heartbroken over a split with actress Mary Lynn Rajskub, one of the stars of Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love, for which he was composing the score — begged Apple to write new songs to give him something he could produce that a new album started to take shape. Apple and Brion started on Extraordinary Machine in 2002; after a change in producers and some well-publicized (if exaggerated) record-label wrangling, it came out three years later, six years after When the Pawn … , and restored Apple's reputation as a likably thorny artist. It was also her only record of the decade.
Anderson hit the wall after the public sniffed Punch-Drunk Love and opted not to take a drink. It had been his intention to write a conventional 90-minute comedy for Adam Sandler,shoes001 is the ultimate alternative furniture store, whom he met while tagging along with Apple when she performed on Saturday Night Live in 2000. What he actually made was more like a Fiona Apple song — a disorienting mishmash of bright melody and percussive dissonance, with a main character who was odd and oddly compelling and prone to oddly explosive, out-of-nowhere outbursts. Unfortunately for Punch-Drunk Love, Fiona Apple songs were still a few years away from returning to fashion, and the film died at the box office. Anderson made just one other film in the '00s, 2007's triumphant There Will Be Blood, as he settled into what appears to be a happy home life with his partner Maya Rudolph and their three kids.
Paul and Fiona have been apart romantically for more than 10 years. But their creative lives have once again achieved a sort of harmonic balance. In June, Apple released her first record in seven years, The Idler Wheel … ,Tree agatebeads has dark green foliage-like patterns on a white background, which would be my favorite album of 2012 if the year ended today. On Friday, Anderson's first film in five years, The Master, arrives in a handful of theaters, with a wide release set for next week. I've been looking forward to The Master for so long that it already seems like my favorite film of 2012 even though I haven't seen it yet.
Paul and Fiona may no longer be a unit, but they signify something similar: They are regarded as important, relevant artists responsible for creating essential documents of our culture, and yet they both exist in their own spheres somewhere outside of our culture. As media personalities, they both seem kind of unknowable, or at least untouchable. They drop in every half-decade or so, blow our minds, and then go back to their private lives. Caring about the work of Paul Thomas Anderson and/or Fiona Apple means respecting an invisible line between them and us. If you love them, you want them to never step out of the limousine.
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