A year ago, when the pandemic was raging through the summer months in Europe, North America and South America, I knew that even when vaccines were widely available, there would still be some dipsh-ts who refused to get them. What I didn’t know at the time was just how many dipsh-ts there are out there. As vaccines have become widely available everywhere in recent months, the number of people refusing to get vaccinated is mind-numbing. It’s also a huge problem for employers, governments and public health officials who are struggling to find a way to force morons to do something good for themselves and good for society. I’m 100% behind employers mandating vaccines, I don’t even give a sh-t about whatever slippery slope argument anyone makes. F–k all y’all, if you don’t get vaccinated, you don’t get to have a job, or go to the movies, or eat at restaurants. Sean Penn is of the same mind, and he’s refusing to go back to work until the entire cast and crew of his Starz limited series is vaccinated.

After returning from the Cannes launch of his film Flag Day, Sean Penn has drawn a line in the sand, one that challenges Hollywood leadership to go further in imposing vaccination requirements for everyone on a film or TV set. In a move that likely will reverberate across an industry still trying to deal with Covid, Penn is refusing to return to work on Gaslit — the UCP-produced Starz limited series he stars in with Julia Roberts — until everyone on the production has been vaccinated for the virus. With the highly contagious Delta variant raging enough that Los Angeles has re-imposed indoor mask wearing and cases among the unvaccinated are spiking again at alarming levels across the country, Penn has insisted to the production that the vaccination of everyone must be mandatory. Through his organization, CORE, Penn has offered to facilitate the vaccination effort, free of charge.

Gaslight’s studio, NBCUniversal, this week mandated mandatory vaccinations in “Zone A,” which constitutes the cast and those who come in close proximity. An email was sent out to cast and crew Wednesday informing that an on-site clinic was made available to provide free Covid vaccinations, done by the same vendor offering vaccinations to NBCUniversal and production crews on the upper lot. The memo said several vaccine choices are available, and the vendor will be back in 21 days to administer a second dose, if necessary. The memo also asked members of the production to present evidence of vaccination to the Covid testing team when they show up for their next shift on the production. Not good enough, per Penn, who has a couple weeks left before he wraps.

Penn’s not doing this to embarrass the studio, or out of fear that he and the other stars might get exposed, because Penn has been fully vaccinated. This is based on the principle that to go unvaccinated puts everyone around you in jeopardy on a set, where crew that isn’t in Zone A still can come in proximity and potentially spread a variant just by being in the trailer of a cast member, for instance. This is one of the first examples of a filmmaker or star directly challenging Hollywood leaders to go further than a recent agreement, and impose strong rules on a production by requiring everyone to be vaccinated.

Gaslit is being shot mostly indoors in Burbank. While early Hollywood productions assiduously adhered to safety protocols and testing to prevent Covid spread — and NBCUniversal has been doing that right along — vaccination still has been considered a personal choice, even though experts attribute the recent spike in cases to those who’ve chosen not to get jabbed.

This puts NBCUniversal in a spot; the studio was part of negotiations between Hollywood unions and major companies that led to approval that Covid-19 vaccinations on film and TV productions could be mandated. But the new protocols, they said in a joint statement on Monday, only gives producers “the option to implement mandatory vaccination policies for casts and crew in Zone A on a production-by-production basis.” Zone A, where unmasked actors work, is the most restrictive of the safe work zones on sets.

[From Deadline]

Ol’ Ham-Face is doing a good thing here. His work with CORE has ensured easy access to vaccines and testing all over the LA area and beyond for months now, and Penn is absolutely right that it’s not just “Zone A” people that he has to worry about. I get that there are union issues, but I would hope that every Hollywood union would be pro-vaccine mandates as well, just as a baseline issue of healthcare (and healthcare costs, since almost everyone in Hollywood has healthcare through their unions). So, yeah – I hope more big-name celebrities throw their weight around for good, to get people vaccinated. I hope it happens in every sport and every sporting event too – at this point, every tennis player, every football player, every basketball player needs to be vaccinated and if they aren’t, they don’t get to play their sport. Period.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.