I haven't been to a Renaissance fair since… well, not since the Renaissance, but a long time. However, I know from the posters that a local edition is still successful. The one I knew about, the original Renaissance Pleasure Faire, was held at Paramount Ranch in Agoura Hills, among the oaks, a cozy, nonprofit, semi-educational, craft hippie festival co-sponsored by KPFK, our leftist radio station sponsored by community. . This was when LARPing had no life beyond Civil War reenactors, before cosplay became mainstream, before “Dungeons & Dragons,” Medieval Times restaurants and blockbuster thatched-roof fantasy movies.
All things change, even in the re-enactment of the Renaissance, and these events, which have proliferated throughout the country and in Europe, can become big business. In the documentary series “Ren Faire,” premiering Sunday on HBO, Lance Oppenheim (“Some Kind of Heaven”) focuses his camera on the 50-year-old Texas Renaissance Festival outside Houston, which he says be the biggest in the world. nation, and specifically its founder, owner and operator, George Coulam.
The constructed narrative is that of a struggle for power. (This is not a detailed look at the obviously complex workings of a Renaissance fair.) In his mid-80s, George is thinking about moving on: he has somehow determined that he will live to exactly 95 and wants to leave enough money behind. time to work on his art, his gardens, and “chasing ladies.” To this end, he is on 15 dating apps, including “sugar daddy” sites; We accompany him on a couple of dates to the Olive Garden, where his first and potentially only question is “Are your breasts natural?”
“What is the king without his kingdom?” muses George, who likes shirts with patches depicting military stars and medals. “What is the king without his goods? He is free “. But, as we will see, giving up his fiefdom will not be so easy.
“It's just a game: some people lose, some people win, and some people win more than others,” observes Glenda, also known as Fairy Godmother, who has known him for a long time. “Something to fill that void, their games.”
Not only is he “King George” in the context of the fair and in the minds of many around him, but he is also the mayor of Todd Mission, the city he incorporated in order to host an event as large as the festival. (He has his own police force). He lives there, in a stone-walled house he calls Stargate Manor, an expensive kitsch temple with his own arboretum, chapel—where George prays to Jesus, Buddha, and Mother Nature—and a sarcophagus that awaits him. He could be considered a naive artist if it were not for his mastery of art.
He barely dares to imagine that he might one day wear the crown, but imagining it anyway, he's Jeff Baldwin, former entertainment director, the latest in a line of general managers whose tenures last no longer than that of a Spinal Tap drummer. (George is capricious.) His association with the festival, which he loves with a childish passion, dates back almost to its inception; There is no one more devoted to it, or to George. (“He’s our benefactor,” Jeff tells his wife Brandi, now interim entertainment director. “He’s his benefactor,” Brandi responds). He describes himself as “the Oompa Loompa leader” of George's Wonka; In the “King Lear” metaphor he shares with Brandi, it is hopefully Cordelia, whose imperious, impetuous father finally recognizes the value of her honest son.
Jeff's main opponent in this succession drama is the thin, hungry-looking, overcaffeinated Louie Migliaccio. His spiritual, temperamental, and physical opposite, Louie, runs a boiled corn stand, a burlesque nightclub, and other concessions on site; He beats up Red Bull like it's a contest and is determined to buy the festival (his family is rich), bolster it with “new, immersive technology,” and, above all, make a lot of money. “Capitalism has a negative connotation today,” Louie says, “but I see its beauty.”
Because the characters can seem ridiculous and relatively human, “Ren Faire” reads like a comedy, of the melancholic variety, a not-so-funny fair. Oppenheim calls the series a “docu-fantasy,” meaning liberties have been taken. Stylistically, he aims for and achieves a cinematic look, with shallow focus, extreme close-ups, elaborate camera movements, and some hallucinatory visual and sound effects to create tension and indicate emotional distress.
Still, real life has a habit of taking over even a docu-fantasy, and “Ren Faire” loses a bit of steam in its final third, as the characters, who now include a third contender, Darla Smith, named co-director. with Jeff: keep going around in circles. You can share her frustration. But because it spends time in a different kind of place, different even from the one the characters imagine themselves inhabiting, it's quite a rewarding watch, even refreshing and not too long. And the ending is, in its own way, happy.
