George Coulam
George C. Coulam (c. 1938) is an American business owner. He is the founder of the Texas Renaissance Festival (TRF), the largest Renaissance fair in the United States.[2] Since 1982, he has also served as the mayor of Todd Mission, Texas.[3] Coulam drew wider public attention after being featured in the 2024 HBO documentary series, Ren Faire. The series explores a succession crisis as Coulam, who founded the TRF in 1974, considers retirement.[4] BiographyCoulam was born to a Mormon family in Salt Lake City, Utah and attended the San Fernando Valley State College. In 1974, Coulam and his brother David purchased 15 acres of land on a former strip mine and founded the TRF. In 1982, Coulam and others incorporated the city of Todd Mission and expanded the TRF. In 1999, Coulam married a woman from Thailand, Susie. Coulam's mansion, Stargate Manor, sits on 200 acres of land in Todd Mission.[5] In 2012, Coulam authored a book entitled Mind-Wars, which claims that holistic medicine reversed his Alzheimer's disease.[6] Coulam has been accused multiple times of sexual harassment,[7] including in a lawsuit by a former personal assistant in 2018,[8] and another lawsuit by a former personal assistant in 2020.[9][10] In popular cultureIn 2002, Coulam was parodied in a season 6 episode of King of the Hill entitled "Joust Like a Woman."[1] In 2021, American filmmaker Lance Oppenheim produced a documentary about the future of the TRF as Coulam planned to retire at the end of the season. Released in June 2024 on HBO, the three-episode series depicts Coulam's lifestyle and the trials and tribulations of the festival over a three-year period.[11] In an interview for NPR, Oppenheim described George as, "George is, I guess, for the lack of the better words, this is that someone describes him in the series, a self-made king. I don't know how many there are out there in America, probably very few, but this is a man who created the largest Renaissance fair in the country. It got so large that he decided to incorporate a city around the fair, and in that city, he became the mayor of everyone around him. Everyone votes for him every single year. And so in a way, he created a real-life fiefdom, of which he has been the sole ruler of for the last five decades".[12] References
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