[Christopher Titus Torrent Norman Rockwell Bleeding
Laurice Whack
My guest today is Christopher Titus, who's quite simply one of the best and funniest comics working today. In addition to having 10, count them, 10 stand up comedy specials to his name, he is also an actor, a writer, a director, and he's the producer of a TV series, feature films, and he right now produces his own daily podcast, which features his infamous Armageddon Updates. Now though his list of credits and accomplishments may not show it, Christopher Titus has every reason to be considered a failure. He was raised in what he calls total chaos by a mentally ill genius, who was his bipolar and schizophrenic mom and an alcoholic hard working badass who was his dad. He was a D/F student, he ran away from home at age 12, and he was on a first name basis with the sheriff. Now despite the numerous hardships in his earlier years, Titus has taken what most would use as excuses and flip them around to become his superpowers. In short, Titus has built an incredibly successful career on his failures. This conversation is a deep dive into what it took for Titus to get where he is today and succeed in Hollywood. And after throwing him on the hot seat, he also makes it public what the next step in his career will be and by the way, when it will happen. If you are familiar at all with Titus, it is probably no surprise that he holds nothing back in this conversation. So if you struggle to succeed due to the voices in your head, or a dark past that overshadows your present, this episode is going to help flip your mindset and give you a whole new perspective on how you can approach your career and your life. Alright, without further ado, my conversation with actor, director, writer, producer and stand up comedian Christopher Titus. To access the show notes for this episode with all the bonus links and resources discussed, as well as to subscribe, leave a review and more simply visit optimizerself.me/episode 181.
Yes. So what my podcast does the Optimizer Yourself Podcast is specifically for creative professionals, most of whom are in the entertainment business like us. But because I'm an editor by default, probably 70% of my audience is people in post. But essentially, I believe my firm belief is that every single person out there has potential that they have not realized. And it's my job to help them realize that potential and design the path towards a more fulfilling career in life. However, the caveat is, they can't do it by sacrificing their health, their relationships or their sanity in the process. And as you know, all too well, Hollywood does its best to take all three from everybody along the way.
here's why. Because they can't run the people that they need. If everybody has happiness and wholeness, they can't run it. They need you to be insecure, they need you to be messed up in some way. They need you to need them for something. Because the reality is, and this is every meeting I've ever been in the people that seem to be the gatekeepers, not all of them I've met, I've met three, three, that three or four that I really thought were creative. But most of the gatekeepers don't have any background in being creative, don't have any background in actually the talent it takes to actually be in front of the camera or to run a camera or to edit like you do, there's an artistic need, and those people don't have it. And what I've learned is, you know, I've been in show business 40 years, what I feel is, there's a certain group of them that almost are angry that they don't have it. It's the solitary Mozart thing where they're just kind of pissed that they can see it, they're near it, but they can't do it, and it pisses them off. And you know, that's just my excuse for my failing career. Well, so
Now that we warmed up the microphone, we're gonna go ahead and we're going to officially get started and I have a feeling we will go a lot deeper than that. But for the sake of anybody, and it's going to be a very small few, but for the sake of anybody that doesn't know, I'm here today with Christopher Titus. And if you're a fan of comedy specifically stand up you probably require no introduction, but I'm going to do one anyways. So you sir, are a stand up comedian, an actor, a writer, a podcaster, an executive producer, director, you run your own production company, you have a huge following on YouTube, but you are also an expert on bonfires and what to do if you have fallen into one. And most importantly, as we will discuss at length during today's conversation and using your own interpretations, you, sir, are a tremendous failure. So on that note, Mr. Titus, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much, man. It's good to be here. Thanks for having me on, Zack. We've been friends for a while. On our Sundays we have, we have seen each other at the ragged edge of our abilities constantly. And so it's good to be on with a friend.
Yes, and one of my favorite keepsakes of all time. And you may not even remember this, you remember the event, but you probably don't know this part a couple of years ago, it was before the pandemic, you've been fairly well known during the Sunday Tony Horton ninja group to have a rip or two on your hands. And you had one where I think you had like eight and you had this picture where you were like this, that picture was taken with my camera. So in my camera roll just randomly you're going through here, my kids and here's this thing, I have a picture of Titus, going like this with eight rip on his hands. One of my favorite photos
With my hamburger heads. I always said that at Tony's if there's ever there's ever a murder at Tony Horton's house, they're gonna find my DNA everywhere they go. Titus is either dead, or he killed these people.
Yes, exactly. But well, one of the things there are a lot of things that I love about Sundays, but I'm sure you can attest to this is that it doesn't take long for you to get a sense of somebody's character. Because man, those workouts are hard. And there's adversity and you really see, like you said, not only people at the ragged edge, but facing down fears. And you get to see pretty quickly what somebody's made of.
That's true man. And it's also in so many different ways, not just the exertion, exertion part of it, where you're trying to do stuff you've never done, I always just see it as a challenge. It's you see who people are when they fail, which is interesting to watch to me, like you. And I remember the first time cuz I'm always I'm kind of on the lower end compared to some of the bad asses that are there. And I And I'm fine with that. Because I don't you know, you guys are in. And I remember when we first started, everybody kind of moves up. And I got really quick over the fact that I was at the lower end of performance. And I've just started. And what happens is, after a couple of weekends at Tony's, you get to this place where you're like, alright, I don't need to worry about what those guys are doing. I need to worry about what I need to do. So I've been working on everything. And it's getting better every time. And I saw you do that early, where you didn't really give a about what anybody else say. And then there's people that fail. And all of a sudden, they're just screaming at themselves. Like they're all like it can't believe I did that and they're mad and you just want to go no one really cares that you're mad at you. The only person upset here is you. So, and it's in the people that are funny. And what I love about the group, and more than anything is how supportive it is. It's good to go on Sundays, to do something as hard as those workouts are. And to have a bunch of supportive people behind you. And it's interesting how fast the unsupportive get edited out, isn't it?
Oh, yeah. Not only that, but the other thing you learned very quickly, not just about people that are facing the fear or the adversity, having gone for a while now. We see a lot of people that come once. You don't see a lot of people that come twice. The first time you're like, I don't know what this is, but I can see I got to work out at Tony Horton's house and then they show up and they think what have I gotten myself into? They wake up the Monday morning after never again, people that show up a second time that says something?
Yeah, but there's some stuff that like, like so a few people that don't know I'm sure you've talked about it. But there's Tony has this list that we that we show up to and I've kind of avoided now when I show up to go look at the list I do and I force myself to, but it's a list of exercises, usually between 14 and 16 or 14 and 18. And at one point, you just look at the list and there's no good news on the list ever. There's never an exercise we're like, oh, we're going to be Wait, what are we doing these are sit down a finger flexes these are going to be easy. It's always some horror and he's just horror chuffed a horror show. And and and if people I keep showing up because I want to finally confront some of them I can't do I found myself one day recently, two times ago, Tony's got this 20 foot pole a bar and you have to climb a rope to it. And I'm at the 20 foot top doing pull ups after I've climbed the rope and it's all this extra that he makes you do you have to you have to do an internal kind of assessment like okay, if I do too many pull ups, I am going to drop 20 feet because I can't get down this rope so it's all the mental I love it and and I people are scared I mean that the rope beam post holy crap the stuff that we have to do when you find yourself hanging 1718 feet in the air and then you've got to transfer to another thing and I'll say is it's like martial arts, I trained martial arts a long time. It's like martial arts you get to this place where the fear goes away and it just becomes about technique and I think that's what that's that's what I love about it and the people that continue to show up inspire me you're one of the dudes that as far as me you west as the guys that show up then I'm like alright, I can maybe be with that those guys one day if I just stopped drinking red wine.
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