The 40-Year-Old Virgin|Ventura Place, Studio City — Where the Bike Finally Stopped

Every chase in this film is on a bicycle, which is why the crash lands the way it does. Andy pedals after Trish, misjudges the traffic, and goes over the handlebars into a billboard at a gas-station corner — the one physical stunt in a movie that otherwise runs entirely on people talking too long in rooms.

The corner is real: Ventura Place, a stub of a street that meets Ventura Boulevard just west of Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Studio City, beside the service station. It is a genuinely awkward intersection, five ways of traffic negotiating one another, which is presumably why the location scouts liked it. Stand on the north sidewalk and the sightline is exactly as the camera framed it.

Studio City earned its name from the Mack Sennett lot that opened here in 1927, and the neighborhood has been feeding crews ever since. The blocks around this corner still get permits taped to the lampposts most months.

Wait for the light to cycle twice. Watch how many cars roll the turn. Then think about a forty-year-old man on a ten-speed choosing this of all places to finally take a risk.

Location per published Los Angeles filming-location guides. Photo: Ventura Boulevard at Laurel Canyon Boulevard, Studio City (Wikimedia Commons).