May 13, 2025 • 9 mins
Johnny Oleksinski joins Mendte in the Morning to talk about the start of Cannes film festival and the ban they have made on the red carpet.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, you got a preview of Johnny Olczinski. Now the
real thing. New York Post entertainment critic Johnny Oligzinsky. So
the con Film Festival started today, and the fact that
you're here and not there means you're not going to
cover it is because they ban nudity.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
You know it. It's the easiest thing for me to
pack for all year. I just bring, you know, a
tiny paper bag with a speedo in it and walk
the red carpet. Actually, with men, they've always been very
strict it can they make you wear tuxedos. If you
don't wear tuxedo, you're going around, or at least you're
not going in the big you know ground Palais Lumiere
where they do all the premieres. But this year they
(00:40):
have instituted quite the rule which they say on the
red carpet for women, no nudity and no voluminious outfits,
which it doesn't mean two two's and it doesn't mean
you know, grand gowns. It's you know, not too much flesh,
which to me is kind of crazy because the movie
is that come out at can are many of them
(01:02):
are tantamount to hardcore porn.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Yes, absolutely true.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
But you can't walk that on the red carpet.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
No.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
But once you're in there, you're seeing truly sometimes not
even enacted, seeing real sex scenes. And they're saying, well,
this is art, this is art, but you on the
red carpet, that's smut and you're not going to be
allowed in interesting.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
I do wish that that implement the voluminous outfits band
on the Met gala. Oh, that suld be wonderful.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Sure, well, what I want there is I want really
cool architectural, big cool outfits to look at. But you're right,
that's getting smutty too. It's a very trashy, trashy event
that we say is classy because you know it's big
stars and stuff, but really it's a bunch of social
media people kind of showing their assets.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yes, it's like those nudy films that they call art,
you know, and you know they're not. Nobody's there for
the artistic value. Well, it's at ken, it's at the Met.
It must be art, it's right, exactly. Let's talk about Madonna.
She's not having a good year. Her biopic has been
trashed or canceled.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
You could say that it might as well have been
because she's been working on this for four years. She
co wrote it, which makes me think maybe the script
isn't quite up to snuff. But they've just announced that
Madonna's big biopic is going to be downgraded to Netflix.
It's going to be a Netflix show.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Oh that's not bad.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
It's kind of isn't bad, but you know what it says.
It says, we don't think that your movie can make money.
We think your movie is going to be expensive and
it won't make money at the box office. Therefore we
won't do it. Because she actually complained maybe a few
months ago, she said, producers have been telling me to
downsize and lower my expectations, which means she's asking for
(02:52):
the moon, and they go, we don't really know what
the audience for a Madonna movie will be because you know,
the Whitney Houston movie did horrible, horrible business. Granted it
was a bad, bad movie, but I thought just the
name recognition alone would get people out. But with these
musician movies, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
What else has been successful, Taylor Swift? I think that's
the end of the list, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (03:15):
As far as well, hers was a concert movie, and
that was amazing because it made over one hundred million
dollars just showing her concert. Because it's all the people
that either couldn't afford to go or just wanted to
see it eighteen times and that was an event.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
People were singing at it. It was amazing. It was
supposed to be amazing. I didn't go. Yeah, a huge event.
It was great.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Elvis did very well for what it was. I don't
think Elvis cost too much money, or at least for
a kind of post lockdown movie. It did really really well.
And still this year we have the Bruce Springsteen movie coming.
Oh and you know the one we talked about so much,
the Bob Dylan film, The Compel. Sure, that made lots
of money and people liked it all over the world,
but there's still just kind of reticent to do them.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I think people love to see a Bob Dylan movie
with out Bob Dylan, oh.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, oh yeah, because Bob Dylan, as talented and interesting
and poetic and brilliant as he is, weirds people out
just a little bit. Timothy shallow May, great guy.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
That's exactly right, that's exactly right. That was tremendous casting
for that Mission Impossible eight. First of all, have you
seen it?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I have seen it, and I hate doing this. You
hate when I do this. The reviews are embargoed, so
I just kind of have to wink insofar as radio
as a visual medium. But it's supposed to be the
last Mission impos Impossible movie, and the vibe at the
end of it you get is that it very well
could be or it might not be. And so to me,
(04:39):
it all comes down to how much money it makes
the box office. I learned a fun fact right before
we went on because the last one just about flopped.
It made five hundred and seventy one million worldwide, which
is very, very bad for a movie that expensive. But
you know what came out the week after it, Barbie.
So you had Mission Impossible, and they went, oh, it's
fine if we released it a week ahead of bar
(05:00):
you know, a few girls will go see it. And
it turns out that became the juggernaut and Mission Impossible
became you know, they also ran they always a bridesmaid.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Will there be another top Gun movie?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
There should be?
Speaker 1 (05:14):
I think so too.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Oh that last one, and gosh, Maverick was such a
good movie, and people rushed out to see it. I
had no idea that the brand of Top Gun was
that strong that you could get all generations out to
see it and they all enjoyed it. I think it
made you know, one point five billion or maybe more
than that.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Yeah, I wasn't I like the first Top Gun, but
I wasn't an enormous fan. I thought the second one
was better.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
The first one, if you rewatch it, all people are
gonna rip their hair out when I say, if you
rewatch it, it doesn't play all that well. It's kind
of long and a little bit muddled. The second one
was I thought a pretty perfect movie.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you. We
were talking in the break about Steven Spielberg saying it
saved Hollywood the second one.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Part of that was that and Tom Cruise got bad
for this at the time, but they were filming it
with all those lockdown rules, and he was screaming at
people to you know, you must follow every single rule
to the letter, because I'm getting this movie out, I'm
producing it. And he's kind of seemed like a bully,
but really he just knew that he had to get
people back to work.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Oh, he had bad press on that. I thought it
was wonderful. I saw that. I saw that when he
was talking to the crew, and but he was basically saying,
do you want to work? If you want to work,
you've got to follow these rules. And he was being
a boss. He was the executive producer of the whole thing.
I thought it was wonderful.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
He got bad press, though it was mixed, just because
no one wants to hear an a list star screaming
at people. I don't think that's the Tom Cruise brand.
I mean, I guess he is the jumping on the
couch brand.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah, who better to yell at people that big star.
I mean, that's exactly I want to bring in Tom
Cruise to yell at the two of you. Right now.
It's a big week on Broadway.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Right It's a it's a fun week. So this is
what we call the road conference, and that is when
a hundred of the Tony voters, there's eight hundred Tony
voters I am one and a hundred of those voters
who live in cities around the country come into town
and what happens is all these shows that want to
win the Tonys throw them at lavish, boozy parties, to
(07:13):
try to get them to vote for them. Nominally, what
they're really doing is they're saying, we want our show
to tour to Chicago and to Indianapolis and Cleveland and
all these places. But really what they want is to
win Tonys.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Do you get to go to the lavish, boozy parties?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Well, because because these people are so ethical, it's unbelievably ethical,
they freeze the press out. They don't want us to
see him. So I have sources at every single party
telling me what's going on, all the insider dish, all
the crazy things. So every night there's one and each
one tries to outdo the other. This year we don't
have I remember, you know, that's like Hugh Jackman, you know,
(07:49):
kissing babies and shaking hands. It's that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Every year. You did a long interview with Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Oh I did. He was great because you know Andrew
and he had a kind of a rough go with
Bad Cinderella a few years ago. But at Sunset Boulevard
has seven Tony nominations. He's riding high, very happy, and
we talked about his career and how he snared Nicole
scherzing Or to Broadway, the Broadway theater he dreams of buying.
So read read all about it in your New York Post.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
What is that gonna be? All?
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Oh, it's all google it right now. I mean listen
to Larry right now.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
You can do both. You can do both.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Multitask absolutely.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
So tell me about Mission Impossible.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
It is so that I'll tell you that Mission Impossible
is a movie series that, to my mind, is of
consistently high quality. I think they're amazingly made movies. The
stunts are always phenomenally impressive. And by the way, if
you live in New York, you should go to the
Museum of the Moving Image, where there's an incredible Mission
Impossible exhibit that examines all the big stunts from every
(08:56):
film for thirty years.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
You are so good. You gave a little bit of
a review without giving a review.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I didn't give I didn't give a review at all.
You hear that, publicist, I didn't get any review.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Thank you so much, Johnny Olexinski, New York Post entertainment critic,
always entertaining. Thanks so much, Johnny
Well, you got a preview of Johnny Olczinski. Now the
real thing. New York Post entertainment critic Johnny Oligzinsky. So
the con Film Festival started today, and the fact that
you're here and not there means you're not going to
cover it is because they ban nudity.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
You know it. It's the easiest thing for me to
pack for all year. I just bring, you know, a
tiny paper bag with a speedo in it and walk
the red carpet. Actually, with men, they've always been very
strict it can they make you wear tuxedos. If you
don't wear tuxedo, you're going around, or at least you're
not going in the big you know ground Palais Lumiere
where they do all the premieres. But this year they
(00:40):
have instituted quite the rule which they say on the
red carpet for women, no nudity and no voluminious outfits,
which it doesn't mean two two's and it doesn't mean
you know, grand gowns. It's you know, not too much flesh,
which to me is kind of crazy because the movie
is that come out at can are many of them
(01:02):
are tantamount to hardcore porn.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Yes, absolutely true.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
But you can't walk that on the red carpet.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
No.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
But once you're in there, you're seeing truly sometimes not
even enacted, seeing real sex scenes. And they're saying, well,
this is art, this is art, but you on the
red carpet, that's smut and you're not going to be
allowed in interesting.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
I do wish that that implement the voluminous outfits band
on the Met gala. Oh, that suld be wonderful.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Sure, well, what I want there is I want really
cool architectural, big cool outfits to look at. But you're right,
that's getting smutty too. It's a very trashy, trashy event
that we say is classy because you know it's big
stars and stuff, but really it's a bunch of social
media people kind of showing their assets.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yes, it's like those nudy films that they call art,
you know, and you know they're not. Nobody's there for
the artistic value. Well, it's at ken, it's at the Met.
It must be art, it's right, exactly. Let's talk about Madonna.
She's not having a good year. Her biopic has been
trashed or canceled.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
You could say that it might as well have been
because she's been working on this for four years. She
co wrote it, which makes me think maybe the script
isn't quite up to snuff. But they've just announced that
Madonna's big biopic is going to be downgraded to Netflix.
It's going to be a Netflix show.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Oh that's not bad.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
It's kind of isn't bad, but you know what it says.
It says, we don't think that your movie can make money.
We think your movie is going to be expensive and
it won't make money at the box office. Therefore we
won't do it. Because she actually complained maybe a few
months ago, she said, producers have been telling me to
downsize and lower my expectations, which means she's asking for
(02:52):
the moon, and they go, we don't really know what
the audience for a Madonna movie will be because you know,
the Whitney Houston movie did horrible, horrible business. Granted it
was a bad, bad movie, but I thought just the
name recognition alone would get people out. But with these
musician movies, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
What else has been successful, Taylor Swift? I think that's
the end of the list, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (03:15):
As far as well, hers was a concert movie, and
that was amazing because it made over one hundred million
dollars just showing her concert. Because it's all the people
that either couldn't afford to go or just wanted to
see it eighteen times and that was an event.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
People were singing at it. It was amazing. It was
supposed to be amazing. I didn't go. Yeah, a huge event.
It was great.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Elvis did very well for what it was. I don't
think Elvis cost too much money, or at least for
a kind of post lockdown movie. It did really really well.
And still this year we have the Bruce Springsteen movie coming.
Oh and you know the one we talked about so much,
the Bob Dylan film, The Compel. Sure, that made lots
of money and people liked it all over the world,
but there's still just kind of reticent to do them.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I think people love to see a Bob Dylan movie
with out Bob Dylan, oh.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, oh yeah, because Bob Dylan, as talented and interesting
and poetic and brilliant as he is, weirds people out
just a little bit. Timothy shallow May, great guy.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
That's exactly right, that's exactly right. That was tremendous casting
for that Mission Impossible eight. First of all, have you
seen it?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I have seen it, and I hate doing this. You
hate when I do this. The reviews are embargoed, so
I just kind of have to wink insofar as radio
as a visual medium. But it's supposed to be the
last Mission impos Impossible movie, and the vibe at the
end of it you get is that it very well
could be or it might not be. And so to me,
(04:39):
it all comes down to how much money it makes
the box office. I learned a fun fact right before
we went on because the last one just about flopped.
It made five hundred and seventy one million worldwide, which
is very, very bad for a movie that expensive. But
you know what came out the week after it, Barbie.
So you had Mission Impossible, and they went, oh, it's
fine if we released it a week ahead of bar
(05:00):
you know, a few girls will go see it. And
it turns out that became the juggernaut and Mission Impossible
became you know, they also ran they always a bridesmaid.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Will there be another top Gun movie?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
There should be?
Speaker 1 (05:14):
I think so too.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Oh that last one, and gosh, Maverick was such a
good movie, and people rushed out to see it. I
had no idea that the brand of Top Gun was
that strong that you could get all generations out to
see it and they all enjoyed it. I think it
made you know, one point five billion or maybe more
than that.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Yeah, I wasn't I like the first Top Gun, but
I wasn't an enormous fan. I thought the second one
was better.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
The first one, if you rewatch it, all people are
gonna rip their hair out when I say, if you
rewatch it, it doesn't play all that well. It's kind
of long and a little bit muddled. The second one
was I thought a pretty perfect movie.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you. We
were talking in the break about Steven Spielberg saying it
saved Hollywood the second one.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Part of that was that and Tom Cruise got bad
for this at the time, but they were filming it
with all those lockdown rules, and he was screaming at
people to you know, you must follow every single rule
to the letter, because I'm getting this movie out, I'm
producing it. And he's kind of seemed like a bully,
but really he just knew that he had to get
people back to work.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Oh, he had bad press on that. I thought it
was wonderful. I saw that. I saw that when he
was talking to the crew, and but he was basically saying,
do you want to work? If you want to work,
you've got to follow these rules. And he was being
a boss. He was the executive producer of the whole thing.
I thought it was wonderful.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
He got bad press, though it was mixed, just because
no one wants to hear an a list star screaming
at people. I don't think that's the Tom Cruise brand.
I mean, I guess he is the jumping on the
couch brand.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah, who better to yell at people that big star.
I mean, that's exactly I want to bring in Tom
Cruise to yell at the two of you. Right now.
It's a big week on Broadway.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Right It's a it's a fun week. So this is
what we call the road conference, and that is when
a hundred of the Tony voters, there's eight hundred Tony
voters I am one and a hundred of those voters
who live in cities around the country come into town
and what happens is all these shows that want to
win the Tonys throw them at lavish, boozy parties, to
(07:13):
try to get them to vote for them. Nominally, what
they're really doing is they're saying, we want our show
to tour to Chicago and to Indianapolis and Cleveland and
all these places. But really what they want is to
win Tonys.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Do you get to go to the lavish, boozy parties?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Well, because because these people are so ethical, it's unbelievably ethical,
they freeze the press out. They don't want us to
see him. So I have sources at every single party
telling me what's going on, all the insider dish, all
the crazy things. So every night there's one and each
one tries to outdo the other. This year we don't
have I remember, you know, that's like Hugh Jackman, you know,
(07:49):
kissing babies and shaking hands. It's that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Every year. You did a long interview with Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Oh I did. He was great because you know Andrew
and he had a kind of a rough go with
Bad Cinderella a few years ago. But at Sunset Boulevard
has seven Tony nominations. He's riding high, very happy, and
we talked about his career and how he snared Nicole
scherzing Or to Broadway, the Broadway theater he dreams of buying.
So read read all about it in your New York Post.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
What is that gonna be? All?
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Oh, it's all google it right now. I mean listen
to Larry right now.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
You can do both. You can do both.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Multitask absolutely.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
So tell me about Mission Impossible.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
It is so that I'll tell you that Mission Impossible
is a movie series that, to my mind, is of
consistently high quality. I think they're amazingly made movies. The
stunts are always phenomenally impressive. And by the way, if
you live in New York, you should go to the
Museum of the Moving Image, where there's an incredible Mission
Impossible exhibit that examines all the big stunts from every
(08:56):
film for thirty years.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
You are so good. You gave a little bit of
a review without giving a review.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I didn't give I didn't give a review at all.
You hear that, publicist, I didn't get any review.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Thank you so much, Johnny Olexinski, New York Post entertainment critic,
always entertaining. Thanks so much, Johnny
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