I haven't been to a Renaissance faire since — well, not quite since the Renaissance, but a really long time. I know from the billboards, though, that a local edition is still going strong. The one I knew — the original Renaissance Pleasure Faire — was held on the Paramount Ranch in Agoura Hills, Calif.
, among the oaks, a cozy, nonprofit, semi-educational, handcrafted hippie festival co-sponsored by KPFK, our leftist community-sponsored radio station. This was back when LARPing had no life past Civil War reenactors, before cosplay went mainstream, before "Dungeons & Dragons," Medieval Times restaurants and thatched-roof fantasy blockbuster movies. All things change, even in the re-created Renaissance, and such events, which have proliferated across the country and into Europe, can be big business.
In the documentary series "Ren Faire," which premiered Sunday on HBO, Lance Oppenheim ("Some Kind of Heaven") trains his camera on the 50-year-old Texas Renaissance Festival, outside of Houston, which claims to be the biggest in the nation, and specifically its founder, owner and operator, George Coulam. People are also reading..
. The constructed narrative is one of a power struggle. (This is not a detailed look into the obviously complex workings of a Renaissance faire.
) In his mid-80s, George is thinking of moving on — he has determined somehow that he will live to be 95, exactly, and wants to leave enough time for working on his art, his gardens and to "chase ladies." To t.
