As young Charlotte Ercoli Coe sat in her uncle’s living room in Los Angeles watching Chuck Jones’ Looney Toons cartoons for the first time, she fell in love.
This was the beginning of her love of filmmaking, and little did she know at the time, but this love would take her to soaring heights.
Years later, Ms. Ercoli Coe has made that love, her life. As a full-time filmmaker, she started her own company, Simulacra Pictures. Simulacra means a representation of something, which she says is “the most vague and epic way to describe moving images.” She also recently had one of her films featured as a part of the New York Film Festival’s 60th anniversary.
“It has been the most fun and beautiful phase of my life so far,” she said in an interview with Passerby Magazine.
Before she was a widely respected writer and director, Ms. Ercolie Coe was a Spud.
She began her time at Ojai Valley School at the lower campus in 8th grade, before graduating from the Upper campus in 2014. Much like most high schoolers, some things seemed trivial because she eagerly wanted to go make a difference in the world.
“I was told I would miss those days and appreciate it later,” she explained “I knew that was true but it’s hard to imagine when you are so eager to get out into the world. But it’s true. I miss it and think of it with tremendous fondness.”
She reminisced on her time at OVS, recalling memories of plays, talent shows, the blending of so many amazing cultures, Mr.Weidlich’s class, whom she referred to as a genius beyond his time, and the general shenanigans that other students were involved in.
“Trust me, the friends and teachers you are making now are forever, “ she adds.
One teacher she developed a close relationship with was Mr. Fred Alvarez.
Mr. Alvarez was her Humanities, World History, and Journalism teacher. While she excelled all of these, winning Mr. Alvarez’s World History award for her dedication, it is her talent in journalism that he remembers distinctly.
“I recognized that she had a talent pretty early on,” Mr. Alvarez said “ Charlie could always tell a good story.”
She says her time with Mr. Alvarez taught her a lot, but she will forever carry one thing from his classes. 
“He gave me my work ethic,” she says.
Now as a filmmaker, Ms. Ercoli Coe has developed her own creative process.
”I work backwards. I don’t write a script out of thin air with made up people.” she explains “I find a muse, and put a camera on them. Their life experiences usually inspire a story to write off. The confusion of reality and fiction is what interests me.”
Her creative process clearly works, as her film Little Jerry, recently premiered at the New York Film Festival.
The festival website describes the film as “Channeling the pure chaos of Jerry Lewis and the Three Stooges with jerky rhythms and discomfiting smashcuts…Little Jerry tells the deranged showbiz tale of the frenzied, dysfunctional, jealous relationship between a puppet comedian (played by viral video icon Douglas Levison) and his jittery, incompetent assistant, who is also his son. “
While the film has found success at one of the biggest festivals in the world, the process of making it was anything but smooth. Ms. Ercoli Coe met a muse, Flannery Lunsford, who she says is the most enigmatic, entertaining person to put on a screen. She spent two years crafting a 100-page script based on his life and he was set to star in the film.
Then, the day before shooting started in New York, the muse, Flannery Lunsford, missed his flight. Ms. Ercoli Coe refused to leave without filming, so she adjusted by hiring an actor she and her crew had never met before and improvised everything.
“Even though everything I was working towards for 2 years was out the window overnight,” she explains. “It was weirdly liberating to have had everything go completely wrong and have to think on the spot.”
Ms. Ercoli Coe only works with her friends and describes a movie as a souvenir of a great day with a great group of friends, so she and her crew just decided to have fun with the situation and ended up producing a masterpiece.
Her success is no coincidence. She has talent and is a hard worker. She was always bound for success, yet it still came as a surprise to her, saying she thought her nomination for the film festival had to be a mistake.
Ms. Ercoli Coe currently has a feature film in the works, while this is something that will take a lot of hard work, she has proved she has the chops for it. She will continue to do great things in the film industry and continue make her OVS family proud.
“She’s my hero,” Mr. Alvarez says “I love that girl so much. And I’m just filled with pride”