How a Horny 86-Year-Old Created the Country’s Largest Renaissance Fair
A real-life Willy Wonka saga that occasionally veers into King Lear-by-way-of-Game of Thrones territory, Ren Faire is another in a long line of docuseries about wildly strange subcultures and their eccentric, cutthroat, and self-destructive inhabitants. In this case, that milieu is the Texas Renaissance Festival, the country’s largest such event, which takes place each October and November in Todd Mission, Texas. As director Lance Oppenheim’s three-part non-fiction affair lays out, both the theme park and its surrounding town were created by George Coulam, who’s known throughout his fiefdom as King George. An 86-year-old tyrant who rules with an iron fist, suffers no one lightly, and is on the hunt for a successor—as well as a much younger wife who boasts no silicon enhancements—King George is as unique and fantastical as the world he’s built, and he proves to be the fascinating (and ultimately detestable) axis around which this colorful tale revolves.
Ren Faire (June 2, on HBO) takes place over the course of the Texas Renaissance Festival’s 2021 and 2022 seasons, with the elderly King George overseeing his massive operation from his absurdly gilded rococo-decorated house. Despite having once been married, King George lives alone, and is also lonely. Thus, when he’s not being a domineering jerk in meetings with his underlings, who wait on him hand and foot and appear to live in perpetual fear of his fickle wrath, he’s having his assistant manage his multiple dating site accounts. Those include one for women looking for sugar daddies, and on the first of two Olive Garden dinners depicted in the series, he greets his 25-year-old date by immediately asking her, “Are those your natural breasts?” As it turns out, they are, which means their meal continues. A subsequent date’s admission that she’s had cosmetic surgery, on the other hand, puts an immediate end to their meet-up, with King George bluntly announcing, “OK, we’re done.”
King George talks about how he wants to finally find love and settle down for a normal life filled with copious sex, since his goal is to die with an erection (something he claims is achievable with Viagra, Cialis, and weekly testosterone shots). Given this fixation on his phallus, it’s no surprise that King George fancies himself the cock of the walk, and despite his age and his confession that he’s made a few bad mistakes over the years, he embraces his status as an irreproachable monarch whose word and wishes are law. Initially inspired by his employment at a San Francisco renaissance fair, George opted to invent a grand one of his own. Taking his cue from Walt Disney, he soon purchased the surrounding land and established a literal town which he could control as mayor, thereby granting himself unfettered ability to realize his every outlandish medieval dream.