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The TV show Titus only lasted three gloriously painful, but very funny, seasons that were packed into two tumultuous years.
Its run came to a crashing end in 2002 because Christopher Titus -- the writer, actor and stand-up comic who gave the show its name, its soul and its lead character -- mouthed off to his boss, Gail Berman. She then happened to be the new president of Fox Entertainment, the network that Titus once called home.
"The whole show got cancelled because I got into a pissing contest with the network president," Titus told the Sun by telephone from his home in Canoga Park, Calif.
"It wasn't a ratings problem. It wasn't the show. It was me, personally, who got the show cancelled."
Titus is back in action now because of DVD. The six-disc box set, Titus: Seasons 1& 2, is in stores now courtesy of Anchor Bay Entertainment. Season 3 comes out in January.
Inflamed with a conspiracy theory about the bad blood that still exists, Titus is convinced the timing is no coincidence. Berman left Fox in March for an executive job at Paramount Pictures.
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"I'm glad it's out there," Titus says sarcastically of the release at this time, "because, oddly enough, that DVD didn't come out until after that president left Fox."
The "pissing contest" concerned Titus' reaction to Berman's suggestions about changes, he says. "The thing with executives in TV is that, if they come in and there is something really good already on, they've got to put their stamp on it, their scent on it."
Titus frankly thought that Berman's suggested changes, including "Tone it down!", were stupid and insulting to the show's core audience -- people who enjoyed seeing a family as spectacularly dysfunctional as the one depicted in the series. Titus says he resisted Berman by treating her, and her suggestions, with arrogance. He talked down as if "she were a 3-year-old."
"Bad move!" Titus says now of his actions. "I admit it. And I've learned to shut up now."
But he always knew he was right about content. With Stacy Keach playing his father, Zack Ward his brother and Cynthia Watros his girlfriend, Titus lead them into the heart of darkness in terms of family life.
Each of the 54 Titus episodes was based on something real from Titus' own life experiences. The incidents he conjured were the tough stuff of reality. That included his drunken, womanizing father's abuse: Dad claimed Christopher was directly responsible for his first heart attack. Or his mother's insanity: In real life, she killed her last husband and later committed suicide. Or his own infidelity: Before getting married, Titus and his wife both cheated on each other in the same week and each found out about the other. (They went through with the wedding and are still married 15 years later.)
"Everything I write is like that," Titus says. "I don't think I'm smart enough to make something up. So everything we did on that show was based on something that happened. And, yes, it was therapy."
For example, he and his wife -- whose name is Erin, just like the character on the show -- fought bitterly every day about "something stupid" during the week that the infidelity episode was shot. "By the end of the week, once we got it on film, with whatever magical thing that film holds, all the pain and evil of it was gone. So every episode cleared something in my life.
"And, because we did it as a comedy, it shows how absurd things are and how really absurd people act. It was definitely therapy ... So now it's like the Zapruder film. You can always go back and see what happened. It's good as evidence and it's evidence of how good the team was that put that show together.
"It's a looming presence. I won't be able to suck (in the future). I won't be able to do something cheesy because I didn't do something cheesy the first time.
"And I'm glad it's out there. The fans have been bugging me since we stopped: 'When's the DVD coming out?' For God's sake, they released The Tick! So now, for me, it's a bit of validation."