HBO’s captivating documentary series Ren Faire offered an engrossing look at the bizarre power dynamics and petty machinations underlying the Texas Renaissance Festival, ruled over by its infamous founder “King” George Coulam. For director Lance Oppenheim, who spent three years embedded in this unconventional kingdom, the experience proved to be a revelatory exploration of ego, control, and our cultural archetype of the aging, power-hungry leader unwilling to loosen their grip.
“The more I worked on this, the more I saw different Georges all over our culture,” Oppenheim reflects. “This story is about a man of advanced age who has created something very specific to him that has become very successful, and he doesn’t know if it can run well without him.”
Indeed, as Ren Faire’s gripping finale showed, the 90-year-old George adamantly refused a lucrative buyout offer that would have allowed him to retire, instead reasserting his iron-fisted control over the festival’s operations. It’s a scenario Oppenheim sees mirrored across the highest levels of government and business leaders desperately clinging to power despite their advanced ages.
“Yes, George reminded me, at different times, of both Biden and Trump,” the filmmaker admits candidly.
While undoubtedly an eccentric figure, prone to pettily punishing subordinates who cross him and juggling a smorgasbord of prospective “sugar baby” girlfriends, George nevertheless commands a certain begrudging respect – or at least fascination – from Oppenheim. “I think he derives pleasure from [other people’s] pain,” he observes. “People said during filming George was a lot more tame around us than when we weren’t there.”
For employees like Jeff Baldwin, once a rising star at the festival before being unceremoniously demoted by George, the experience took a brutal emotional and financial toll. “Jeff said something to me that was very telling, which was, ‘Thank you for making something so wonderful out of something so horrible,'” Oppenheim recalls.
The filmmaker’s unique, sometimes fictionalized stylistic flourishes aimed to mirror the Renaissance festival’s own blend of fantasy and reality. “If you want to find truth,” he explains, “you have to embrace the manipulation.”
While the three-episode arc feels complete in capturing George’s maddening cycles of rewarding and punishing his underlings, Oppenheim isn’t ruling out future installments. “Never say never,” he teases. “The question ends up becoming less about who’s going to be the next king and more about power – and what power does to you and what it does to the people who want to have it.”
In the meantime, viewers are left to ponder whether the true magic of Ren Faire lies in its medieval lore and festival revelry, or rather, the cantankerous ruler hopelessly spellbound by his own creation, unable to imagine a world where he is not the one wearing the crown.
