Comedian Titus: ‘The Evil Cosby’

Friday, June 29, 2001 | 9:25 a.m.

Saying Christopher Titus' humor is a little warped is like saying the Titanic sprang a leak.

The Northern California native will appear at the Riviera tonight and Saturday, performing his popular one-man show, "Norman Rockwell is Bleeding."

"Norman" is the premise for Titus' sitcom on Fox, which is titled (appropriately enough) "Titus."

The show, whose stories are based upon true experiences of Titus and his dysfunctional family, has been picked up for a third season.

"We hit our stride last year," Titus said, speaking on a cell phone in a car he was driving off a dealership lot somewhere in California. He had just bought the car for his aunt.

"My aunt's van kept breaking down and so I went and bought her a car. I just paid for it and I'm leaving now," he said. "With my mom and dad gone now, I gotta spend the money on someone."

Titus has made a ton of money telling amusing stories about his dysfunctional family, including instances of infidelities, suicides and physical abuse.

Those anecdotes, and a seemingly endless number of others, are examined by Titus with humor onstage and on the television screen.

"I like to think of myself as the evil Bill Cosby," said the blond-haired, 36-year-old comedian, who left his home in Fremont, Calif., at age 17 and began performing stand-up comedy in San Francisco at age 18.

Titus says he has a knack for finding things funny in the most evil situations.

He is retiring his "Norman" show after this tour and replacing it with one titled "Tabloid Reality."

"Tabloid" will be a show about a stand-up comic who accidentally kills his psychiatrist.

"The media blows it up to a huge thing and the guy starts telling about what's happening to him and it will be funny," Titus said.

At the end of the show the comedian will be killed by a sniper.

It's the ending you would expect if you have followed Titus' career.

"The show is pretty radical," Titus said. "My mom shot and killed her husband, and we did that episode on the show. We will be funny, funny, funny and then hit people really hard."

He said if his show had not survived its first season, he had the final episode planned. It was going to be revealed he was in prison for killing his entire family.

But with the show finding its audience, the family is safe.

Titus said he spent years complaining about life. His mother's mental illness eventually resulted in suicide. His late father was a heavy drinker who believed in tough love.

"I was walking around (complaining) all the time, blaming my mom and dad for all the bad things and then one day I realized what a bunch of crap that was," Titus said.

"I was just looking back at life. I decided to look forward."

Still, his humor has not lost the edge that has been his trademark for much of his 16-year career.

"The problem with my comedy in the beginning was that I grew up listening to Cosby," Titus said. "Like Cosby's, my comedy is story based. The problem was I was telling them like Cosby. I would yell out, 'Hey, how many of you have mothers in a mental hospital?' A friend took me aside and said, 'What the hell are you doing, telling stories about the evils of life and sounding happy about it? The audience is confused.' "

It took a few years but he finally found his comedic style and exhibits it on his television show, which is a melange of George Burns, Robert Schimmel, Lenny Bruce and other innovative comics.

On the show, Titus talks to the camera, the way Burns did on his series in the 1950s.

He uses several camera techniques to travel back in time and to stop time altogether so that Titus can speak to the audience. The visual cues keep people from becoming confused by the action.

"(Fox) lets us push the envelope a little bit," Titus said.

He said when the series started he was able to get away with his unusual approach because no one at the network was paying attention.

"We were basically a write-off for Rupert Murdock," Titus said.

He said it isn't unusual for a first-time viewer to dislike the show.

"Everybody tells us, 'The first few times, I just didn't get it,' " Titus said.

"But somebody, a wife or someone, would make them watch it a few more times and all of a sudden they can't miss it. In our show, you never know what's going to happen."