NY Times, Bordwell and what happened to the promise of 1999?

From the Bordwell blog: Full story here.
Here's the start:
"Why, asks Sharon Waxman in the New York Times, have the much-touted directors of the 1990s slowed their output so drastically? Kimberly Peirce released Boys Don’t Cry in 1999; her second film, Stop-Loss, will come out this spring. Darren Aronofsky followed Requiem for a Dream (2000) with The Fountain, which hit screens last fall. Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love is over four years old. David O. Russell, Spike Jonze, David Fincher, Baz Luhrmann, and several others of their generation have, Waxman points out, “taken long hiatuses before stepping back up to the plate.”

...
Still, the slow pace of some heralded filmmakers is noteworthy. Waxman’s explanations, culled from interviews with Hollywood cognoscenti, intrigue me. Probably no one explanation will provide the answer, but it’s worth thinking about the many forces at work. I’ll run through Waxman’s five main points, commenting on each. Then I’ll toss in a few of my own."

And then Bordwell goes thru those points plus his, often refuting the NY Times points as he goes. For those of you who thought 1999 was going to be the start of a golden age -- Fight Club, American Psycho, Ravenous, Being John Malkovich, Three Kings, Go, Election, Magnolia, Boys Don't Cry, The Iron Giant, Sixth Sense, Ghost Dog, American Movie, Office Space, South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut -- all released that year, it didn't really happen that way -- and exploring why seems a worthy endeavor. Still, Waxman doesn't have much of a chance under Bordwell scrutiny.

As you guys intern this semester, i wonder if your experiences shed any light on this question.