Important Scoop: A Job Shuffle at HBO's 'Ren Faire'
A 'Ren Faire' Where Are They Now with Lance Oppenheim. Jeffrey Baldwin's new job title, how many energy drinks Louie Migliaccio drinks in a day, and who was recently fired.
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Ren Faire, a docuseries directed by Lance Oppenheim and executive produced by the Safdie Brothers and Ronald Bronstein (the team behind Uncut Gems, Good Time, and Heaven Knows What) premiered Sunday before last on HBO and concluded with its second two episodes this past Sunday. The series follows the succession drama surrounding the Texas Renaissance Festival, one of the largest renaissance festivals in the world, with its eccentric, 86-year-old owner, George “King George” Coulam poised to retire and pass on his empire to any one of his eager, long suffering underlings.
[Spoilers for Ren Faire to follow, proceed at your own risk if you haven’t finished yet and you’re trying to avoid them]
Some of the main players in the drama include George Coulam, the owner of the Texas Rennaissance Faire; Jeffrey Baldwin, the Rob Reiner-esque actor and former entertainment director of the festival who has become its general manager; Louie Migliaccio, the teetotalling, energy drink-addicted proprietor of the festival’s kettlecorn operation who is leveraging family money to make a play to buy out George and take over the festival himself; and Darla Smith, the former elephant handler who has become the festival’s vendor liaison, who is making her own play for a bigger role in the festival and possibly in the festival’s post-Coulam era.
Over the course of the series’ three episodes, they all sort of plot against each other while trying to curry King George’s favor while avoiding his considerable wrath. They all seem to generally exist at King George’s whim and pleasure.
As the show begins, Jeffrey Baldwin is serving as King George’s general manager. When George sends Jeffrey and his wife, Brandi (the festival’s new entertainment director) off to scout a renaissance festival in Germany, the plotting and backstabbing really heats up — with Darla, Louie, and everyone else apparently rushing to undermine Jeffrey while he’s out of town. All-expenses-paid vacations are a nice perk, but a wise courtier understands that in an absolutist’s court, proximity to the monarch is the basis of all power.
King George becomes convinced (possibly thanks to someone in his ear) that Jeffrey isn’t up to the task of general managing, and that Brandi (who has a theater degree and years of experience running theater troupes) only has her position through Jeffrey’s nepotism — which in turn is its own sign of Jeffrey’s weakness. King George fires Brandi as soon as the Baldwins return, and then, after a festival that spawns a mini scandal over its supposedly unsafe water supply (the Texas Renaissance Festival takes place in Todd Mission, Texas, a town George Coulam had incorporated expressly for the purpose of hosting the festival) he fires Jeffrey after the conclusion of that year’s festival.
Darla Smith becomes the new general manager while Louie Migliaccio makes yet another play to buy the festival. After a period of soul-searching and extreme weight loss (partly due to weight-loss surgery), Jeffrey Baldwin eventually gets himself rehired in his previous, lesser position of entertainment director. Darla soon draws King George’s ire (Coulam is nothing if not demanding and capricious), and by the end of the series, Coulam has fired Darla, appointed himself as the new general manager, and rejected Louie’s latest bid for ownership. That’s more or less where the series ends.
The latest update, straight from the mouth of director Lance Oppenheim (who we spoke with a few months ago while he was promoting Spermworld on Hulu) is that Jeffrey Baldwin has indeed been rehired as the Texas Renaissance Festival general manager. It was the outcome Baldwin had hoped for during the series (one scene sees Jeff and Brandi discussing an email of Jeff’s to George, and whether it seems too desperate).
Baldwin’s promotion came, according to Oppenheim, along with some other, uh, staff shuffles. Said Oppenheim:
“Even this morning, the craziest thing happened. George, I talked to him, he had just seen the second and third episode. Everyone else had seen it before him. He loved the series, which is crazy, and the only thing that he had asked me is what is the song that Jeffrey sings in his car. And I told him it was from Shrek the Musical. He called Jeff into his office this morning, and said what's the name of the song that you sing your car? And Jeff said it's a song called ‘Who I'd Be,’ and George said ‘Good, Jeffrey, good,’ and he apologized to Jeffrey for how he had treated him, and then he fired everyone at the festival. And he gave Jeffrey his job back. So Jeff is now the general manager of the Faire. And Jeff said it was because of the documentary — that when George watched it, it was like the three ghosts from Christmas visited him, and awoke something in him.”
Jeffrey’s three favorite cultural references are King Lear, Willy Wonka, and the Shrek musical, not necessarily in that order. For whatever reason, the music-related lines in Ren Faire got the biggest laughs from me. One was Jeffrey pulling out the Shrek musical, and the other was George’s landscaper deadpanning “George really likes Enya.”
I asked Oppenheim if Jeffrey getting the general manager job back qualified as a happy ending, at least for George’s most devoted courtier.
“It's a bittersweet ending, because George is now sending Jeff to India, to a chocolate convention. I don't know what the f*ck is going on there with that, but Jeff is so excited to go, and I'm like, literally this is what happened before. You know what's going to happen when you go to India, Jeff. George is going to have a meeting with Louie like he did in the series. So George gave him the job and wants him to go, and if you’re Jeff, how are you going to turn down an all expenses paid trip to India? But it's... it's interesting. The events that happen in the series will happen again.”
Meanwhile, a piece in Vanity Fair reveals the answer to another question I had asked Oppenheim. Namely, how many energy drinks Louie Migliaccio consumes in a day. According the article, Migliaccio told them that “He typically consumes between eight and 14 energy drinks a day [during the festival season] compared to just two or three off-season.”
The FDA has cited less than 400 milligrams of caffeine in a day as a safe amount. Of the energy drinks Migliaccio drank in the show, Bang has 300 milligrams per can, Monster has 160 milligrams in its 16-ounce and 240 milligrams in its 24-ounce cans, and Sugar-Free Red Bull has 77 milligrams per eight-ounce can (source). I’m not a doctor, but at a certain point I would think you’re better off doing cocaine.
Anyway, that’s the update. You can listen to my whole conversation with Oppenheim below. Ren Faire is a fascinating and strange watch, just like Oppenheim’s previous documentaries, Spermworld and Some Kind of Heaven.
In some ways, Ren Faire is an apt capper for Oppenheim’s “sad old men” trilogy. As Oppenheim puts it, the portrayal of King George offers an interesting window into the psyche of people like Joe Biden and Donald Trump (not to mention Nancy Pelosi and the late Diane Feinstein) who are clearly getting well on in years and seem to be in a perfect position to just ride off into the sunset and enjoy their successes, but just can’t seem to let go.
But yet there aren't any Stimpy faires.
Jeffrey felt like an actor character in Barry