Ren Faire, a Real Succession Story
HBO’s Ren Faire is a quasi-documentary about George Coulam, “the eccentric 86-year-old founder of the Texas Renaissance Festival, and the battle to inherit the kingdom he created.”
George goes by ‘The King.’ He founded the festival fifty years ago. He built a town around the festival grounds, incorporated it, and became mayor of that as well. He is the sole owner, the sole decision maker, the sole arbiter of employee disputes, and everything else that makes the Texas Renaissance Festival run day-to-day, year-to-year.
HBO and ‘Cashing Out’
The King allowed the filmmaker Lance Oppenheim to film him, his employees, and the faire after deciding that he was “ready to cash out on his one-of-a-kind creation, vetting a select few of his flamboyant employees to take over.” Oppenheim thought that selling the company to an employee in a company where, to be kind, there wasn’t exactly a team atmosphere would make a great subject. He interviewed George and was absolutely convinced George “was on the verge of selling.”
The festival runs eight weekends a year from November to January. Oppenheim ended up filming over three seasons, putting in almost 100 days of shooting. The final cut is three episodes long, each episode is a season of the festival. Each season, there’s an offer to buy out George. Each season, George, in his late eighties, talks about his absolute conviction that he will drop dead the day he turns 95 and the need to sell so he can do the things he wants over the time he has left. It is a long list. In episodes 1 and 2, he eventually torpedoes the offers.
Succession Planning in the Real World
It was and is clear to those of us at Indigo Family Law who have experience working with senior owners of closely held companies that George was not going to sell. Ever. He has no immediate family, no friends who do not also work for him, and has been called the King so long and so often he clearly believes he is one.
We were watching an incredibly successful business that supported a dozen or more other businesses and a host of employees – seasonal and year-round – with an elderly owner, no board of directors or other governing mechanisms, and no succession plan whatsoever.
By the time the third episode – Oppenheim’s third season of filming – began, this still wasn’t clear to the director and producers. There was, though, a serious offer by people (the ‘Greeks’) with money and experience with the faire. It looked great.
The Only Planning that Happens in Ren Faire
There was some furious planning going on a few weeks into the festival season – ‘just in case’ planning, how to pivot if the deal went down, how to wrap up if it did not.
That planning was by Oppenheim and his HBO partners. There had been so many twists and turns with no real change that, according to Oppenheim “We had to chart out, ‘here are the plans,’ either, like, this could keep going for forever, in which case everyone will lose, and the cycle will continue, or there will be a new episode. It was extremely stressful because it was like, ‘Are we going to have to ask for more resources to keep going? Am I gonna get fired off of this thing?’ Because people are gonna think, I love shooting so much. Whereas in reality, I was just hoping that time would reveal the answers to all of our questions.”
George found an excuse – as everyone at Indigo knew he would – to sink the Greeks’ offer. Dramatically speaking, that left HBO with a story that went nowhere over three years of filming. But Oppenheim and company had planned for it and were already in the process of editing and reediting and changing the feel of the series to the point where a show that started out as a comedy became a bit of a modern retelling of King Lear. A tragedy.
No Planning = Chaos
It’s obvious George will do no planning and will enjoy being the King until he turns 95 – if his prediction is correct. The only sure thing here is that when he dies while still in full control of every asset and every aspect of the Faire, chaos will follow. Dozens, probably more, business owners will lose their businesses on the festival grounds, hundreds of seasonal employees will lose their jobs.
That’s Ren Faire. What happens if you don’t plan?