Hollywood Without Wheels: A Not-So-Pedestrian Guide to Getting Around Town

Hollywood has long portrayed L.A. as a city enamored with driving. Think of Steve Martin hopping in the car to go to his next-door neighbor’s house in 1991’s L.A. Story or Kevin Connolly getting mocked for pounding the pavement in the 2015 Entourage film.

But behind the scenes, some workers in the entertainment business make a point to avoid cars, at least when they can. As Gen Z shies away from cars (according to McKinsey, the age group is shaping up to be less interested in driving than previous generations), the young Hollywood workforce can take a page from veteran industry commuters.

One of them is Bill Wolkoff, a writer and producer who recently worked on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and The Man Who Fell to Earth. Wolkoff began commuting by bike nearly two decades ago after his car broke down. At the time, he was a script coordinator — not a job known for its remuneration — and couldn’t afford to buy a new car. He could, however, buy a new bike. Nearly 20 years later, he’s still biking to work from his home in Mount Washington.

“Not being stuck in traffic is great. I just feel like I’m really part of the city,” Wolkoff says. “When we’re in our cars, it really does separate us from the world and compartmentalize us and it really strips out your sense of community.”

Adam Conover, creator of Adam Ruins Everything and The G Word With Adam Conover, began taking the bus after spending his first few years in L.A. making the “miserable” weekday odyssey between L.A.’s East and West sides on Fountain Avenue in a used 2010 Prius. He eventually found solace doing a different commute in the DASH bus, which cost just 35 cents a ride (and still does, if paying with a TAP card). “The idea that we don’t have public transit here is a myth, and the fact that people repeat it is bad for the city because it means we don’t invest enough in transit,” he says.

Some industry workers find that going car-less can have its professional perks. Mad Men and Bosch writer-producer Tom Smuts made headlines in the mid-2010s when he led bike rides from Santa Monica to downtown for the Emmys. Today, when he has a job in the L.A. basin, he still bikes to work one to a few times a week. (He also likes to ride his motorcycle.) “I have medium ADHD, and I find it’s really hard for me to sit and work,” says Smuts. “So I often write by either hiking or biking and just recording my thoughts.”

Mosaic manager (and 2025 Next Gen-er) Drew Shenfield touts the serendipity that comes with walking around the city. Shenfield, who hasn’t owned a car since 2021, primarily gets around on foot. Taking meetings around town often isn’t a problem, he says, given that “80 percent of offices, agencies, production companies are so close to Santa Monica or Sunset, and there are such good bus routes [nearby].”

Shenfield, moreover, loves the random encounters he has near the office and in his own neighborhood. “I feel like once a day I run into somebody who I’ve been talking to or wanted to catch up with,” he says. “There’s a lot of surprising people interaction that I think is good for my career.”

Still, theirs isn’t exactly a common lifestyle in the business, nor in L.A. at large. Per a 2018 study from UCLA’s Institute of Transportation Studies, about 77 percent of SoCal households ride public transportation rarely or never.

But they are in their own way ambassadors for the car-free life. Wolkoff recalls his time working in the writers room for The Man Who Fell to Earth, which was in Santa Monica. During that time, he biked to downtown’s Union Station to get on a train to the office. “Half the staff was complaining about the commute,” he remembers. “And then they started driving to the train station and getting on the train with me.”

This story appeared in the Nov. 5 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.