The Titan of Comedy

Christopher Titus’s career in comedy spans nearly three decades. He’s done six stand-up tours, starred in multiple Hollywood films, and currently runs a podcast. Children of the 2000s best remember him as the producer, director, writer and star of the hit FOX TV show about his life—Titus. The show normalized the “dysfunctional family”—a term Titus himself doesn’t like—pointing out how all of us are a little dysfunctional and there’s nothing wrong with that.

His stand-up style is somewhat comparable to the legends George Carlin or Lenny Bruce, although Titus brings his own flavor of intelligent vitriol. Each act is staged as a scathing monologue critiquing culture, politics and general human stupidity. His newest act, the “Angry Pursuit of Happiness,” is the creation of a new-and-improved Titus, one who’s made peace with his anger and discovered that there is in fact, a bright light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

How’s the new tour been going?

Good. This is the best thing I’ve ever written. It’s been getting standing ovations every night. For years I was always trying to do comedy to get somewhere, then I got a TV show, and it got canceled. Then I did movies. But now I just really, really love doing stand-up. The moment-by-moment joy that I feel on stage now is the most I’ve ever felt in my life.

Tell us a bit about this show.

I do theme shows. This one’s about how none of us seem to notice the life we’re living. We’re always thinking about the future. What’s coming to kill us and how do we stop it. We’re never thinking about now. I do a bit called “Here’s How Life Goes.” It goes from birth to death, and it’s horrible really, what happens because we’re all trying to find happiness. It really doesn’t exist in the future. It’s about being happy right now.

Does this act have a lighter tone than your past ones?

The reason I wrote it is because I got happy. I was scared. “How can I be funny if I’m happy? I’ve got to be pissed off or have some horrible nightmare in my life to have some kind of edge.” I do another bit called “Armageddon Day.” I think we need to legislate “Armageddon Day” because there’s just too many of us on the planet and a lot of us don’t contribute.

Was there a pivotal moment where you realized you were happy?

It was the day of my [second] wedding. I know this is going to sound lame, but here’s what happened. My ex-wife was fucking psycho, and she really just raped my bank account and everything I worked for. I’ve been with my new wife, Rachel, for seven or eight years, and on the day of my [second] wedding I broke down and I cried. I started to have a panic attack. So I grabbed my guitar, I was down in the garage and the family was with us, and I told nobody to come in. I played the guitar for three hours, and I had to accept the fact that there was nothing wrong with this girl. And I kept thinking, “It’s gonna happen. It’s a trick. It’s just a big seven-year trick. She’s been reeling me in, and after tomorrow, she’s gonna turn into Darth Vader.” I had to do some self-therapy, and I was fine. I realized it’s okay to be happy. And it’s been great.

A few months ago, you announced the sequel to your hit show, Titus, got axed. What happened?

I’ve done five specials since Titus, so I thought, I got all this new material on my family, let’s wrap this up. I ended up in a mental institution at the end of the series. So I thought, we’ll get some 13 episodes, they have short rectification, then we can move forward. I must’ve pissed off FOX during one meeting. The CEO of 20th Century Fox Television, Gary Newman, said, “Nope, we can’t do it.” I said, “Just give us the rights to it, we don’t want you guys to pay for it. We’ll take it to Amazon, we’ll take it to Hulu, and they’ll do the production.” And he said, flat-out, “No. We own your life. You can’t take it anywhere. You can’t even use the characters.” They wouldn’t even let me take it to go pitch it. I said, “I’ll do it for a dollar. I’ll do it for one dollar.” I just wanted to wrap up the series. We had the original cast agree to it, and the talks went on for two months, and Newman just said, “Sorry.” Basically, I gave them a show about my life, and now I don’t own my life.

Have you been working on any new projects since then?

Yep. We’ve got “Special Unit.” I did a pilot for it for Comedy Central. The whole premise of it is, because of the Americans With Disabilities Act, the LAPD has to hire four handicapped undercover detectives. I basically play Nick Nolte’s mugshot: I’m their training officer and I hate them. My ex-girlfriend is the mayor, she was a prostitute years ago when I met her, but now that she’s the mayor she’s trying to bury me. She gives me the four officers. When you think about it though, they’re the best undercover team in the world because they’re all disabled, no one would ever suspect them. But they’re all a-holes. Denver-comic Josh Blue’s in it. He plays a villain, an assassin. Comedy Central went back and forth about it for eight months, and then they said, “It’s too edgy.” I said, “SOUTH PARK!” They said, “That’s a cartoon. It’s different.” I think maybe now it’ll be okay to do it, so I wrote an entire movie script, and we start filming in October. I made it because I’ve got some friends who’re disabled. Michael Aronin, a very funny comedian, Josh Blue—they both have cerebral palsy—and everybody gives a lot of lip-service to the disabled. They’re like, “We love ’em, man! They’re special little heroes!” Except when they’re out in public with them, they marginalize them, they don’t talk to them, they dismiss them. I’ve seen it happen. I wrote this show to give the disabled a platform for really deep, balls-out funny—and wrong funny.

The character of Dave Titus is one of the first “stoners” who was a major, recurrent character on an American TV show. How’d you get away with that back in 2000?

It was just a character. It wasn’t like we tried to throw him in there in any way to be political. But Zack Ward pulled it off so well. We even had pot-growing in scenes, he had a whole greenhouse at one point. It’s great getting credit where credit is due. Thanks.

You’ve done your fair share of partying in the past. Do you believe cannabis is addictive compared to other drugs?

No. I quit when I quit it. But I had an incident this last year when my wife and I had some edibles. By the way, Denver: Nice job on the weaponized edibles. Here’s another thing, if someone tells you, “Only take this much”—cut it in half. A guy comes into a show one night, and he gives us these chocolates. Then he takes us aside and asks us when we last smoked, and I said it’s been years. So he says, “Okay, here’s what I want you to do. I want you take those three pieces of the chocolate bar”—like a Kit-Kat bar—”do maybe half of one of these.” Well, my male ego gets involved. My wife and I are staying up in a cabin, we’re up in the woods thinking nothing can happen to us. We each eat a whole bar. Dude, I’ve never had it just keep accelerating. Keep in mind I haven’t smoked in a long time, so my tolerance was crazy-low. It was like a rollercoaster that had no dip. It just kept going up. At one point, we just stayed in our cabin. On the bathroom door was this frosted glass window. The problem with it was when someone goes to the bathroom, you can see their silhouette. I was laying on the bed, looking at the toilet, and I just lost it because it became clear to me, “Who puts a glass door in front of the bathroom?” [Laughs] We just kept getting higher and higher and higher.

Cannabis legalization is sweeping the nation. Where do you see it going?

My question is, when is the federal government going to get involved and start regulating? When is RJ Reynolds and all these other companies—hell, Monsanto—when’re they going to get involved? If legal weed spreads across the country, suddenly everybody’s going to get involved. When Hershey’s is making dark-chocolate THC bars, the government is going to have to put a limit on it. People need to wake up to the fact that right now—right now—is the Golden Era. Twenty years from now, all these potheads are going to be looking back saying, “Aw, man, you should’ve been in Colorado. 2014 was crazy!” It’s going to get weird once all the big companies get in on it.

[Here’s what I don’t get about it. I have never had a problem with a guy who was just high. I don’t see it being something that’s going to ruin lives.] It might kill your memory a little bit, but anybody who does anything to excess is going to have an issue. They continue to spend millions of dollars on alcohol advertising, but I don’t understand the issue with pot. I don’t see any problem with it . . . and Colorado’s proven that.