the legend of a comedy nomad
FILMS “Mitch Hedberg just might have been the funniest man most Americans never heard of.”
– BILL BROWNSTEIN, THE MONTREAL GAZETTE
2 FILMS THE BEST THERE NEVER WAS
Mitch Hedberg is part of comedy folklore.
Like an inside joke that only you and a few of your friends understand, but those in the outside world haven’t yet picked up on.
The first time you see him perform you might be a little dumbfounded. But within two or three of his razor-sharp, often surrealist jokes, chances are you’ll click into that special Mitch frequency.
To know him is to love him, and those who do still cherish his every observation – each one so simple yet so profound, and undeniably hilarious.
But so many people missed out.
Had he lived another decade, it’s widely believed that he would’ve gone on to play massive arenas around the world and released a number of blockbuster comedy specials on premium channels and top-tier platforms.
But he didn’t. He died having plateaued right on the cusp of stardom – relegated to legend status within the comedy world, but merely an item of pop- culture trivia for far too many others. 3 FILMS Mitch lived in front of a brick wall. Those addresses he occasionally had in Seattle, West Hollywood, and at the Chelsea Hotel were just places his mail piled up.
He spent half his life on an unending comedy tour, barnstorming clubs, colleges, and theaters across America – like a modern-day vaudevillian.
He lived – and died – on the road.
Mitch’s life ended just as YouTube and social media were about to upend the traditional paths to superstardom, as Netflix specials these days are commonly going to fresh-faced influencers who are just starting out.
He never even got a full-hour TV stand-up special, yet his material still echoes on to those who know him, like a comic from a bygone era, through his three comedy albums.
To a large degree, his story is the story of stand-up comedy in America. He was a tried-and-true, purebred, old school road comic.
One of the last of the original breed of comedians that are all but extinct today.
4 FILMS “Only the offbeat ones die young: John Belushi, Freddie Prinze, Andy Kaufman, Bill Hicks, Sam Kinison and now Mitch Hedberg, another great one. These people all had very different universes to offer us, and they’ve all been taken away.”
5 FILMS MEET MITCH
• Mitch was named the 20th best comedian of all time by Rolling Stone.
• His first album, Strategic Grill Locations, was named the 16th best comedy album of all time by Spin magazine.
• His second album, Mitch All Together, earned gold record certification for selling over 500,000 copies.
• Time magazine called Mitch “the next Seinfeld” in 1998.
• Mitch made 10 appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman – only three other comics were on more often.
• Comedy royalty including George Carlin, David Letterman, Doug Stanhope, Ron White, Jim Gaffigan, Dennis Miller, Colin Quinn, Margaret Cho, Nathan Lane, and Mike Birbiglia are among Mitch’s biggest fans.
• Right after his death in 2005, “Mitch Hedberg” topped Google Zeitgeist’s weekly list of the top 10 gaining search queries – beating out Pope John Paul II, who died three days after Hedberg.
6 FILMS “I’ve never cared about the money, the driving force was getting a laugh with my thoughts.”
7 FILMS “Our next guest is a talented comedian, who is one of our favorites, he’s been on the program many, many times before, the very funny, very odd Mitch Hedberg.”
– DAVID LETTERMAN 8 FILMS THE FILM
In a world overflowing with streamers and endless content, with hundreds of millions of subscribers eager to binge the next great story, a documentary about Mitch Hedberg is inevitable. It’s just a matter of time. And now is the time.
When eight hours are given to Tiger King, one of the greatest stand-ups of all- time – with nearly a million album units sold and a cult following of devoted fans – can certainly command ninety minutes.
Mitch has been covered in newspapers, blogs, magazines, podcasts, and on satellite radio – but barely at all onscreen.
While his material and delivery continue to resonate over MP3s and Spotify streams, Mitch needs to be seen to be fully comprehended and understood.
His signature look – that sly, shy grin hiding behind long hair, colored glasses, and closed eyelids – is just as big a part of who he is as his jokes are.
The documentary will be a visually-rich, comprehensive, and definitive telling of the rise – and fall – of one of the most legendary comedians ever to have taken the stage. An honest and authentic tribute to the life of a comedy god who hasn’t gotten the attention he deserves.
Think Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck meets The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling.
9 FILMS “The creative process is very simple. I would say it’s daydreaming. I go off into my head for a while. It’s kinda like fishing in your head and writing it down. It’s not sitting down to write jokes, it’s sitting down to put your mind in a frame where you can catch jokes easier.”
10 FILMS “I think Mitch Hedberg, had he lived and been able to continue on, most likely you could put in that short list with some of the all-time great comics. He had that potential in him.”
– GREG CHARLES, CAROLINE’S ON BROADWAY
11 FILMS BACKGROUN D
Mitch Hedberg spent the first half of his life enjoying a staggeringly normal childhood in a salt of the Earth family in St. Paul, Minnesota.
He spent the second half on the road, living life as a comedy nomad.
He went on stage for the first time in Boca Raton, Florida and never looked back. He cut his teeth in the Pacific Northwest, playing motels, bars, and lounges in Idaho and Montana, to less than ideal audiences, often stupefied by his bizarre material and persona. But he quickly drew attention and adulation at the Comedy Underground in Seattle.
He strategically parlayed his limited exposure into a few brief TV appearances and got invited to Just For Laughs in 1996 – where he started to really get noticed. He made his network television debut in 1997 on The Late Show with David Letterman and won the Seattle Comedy Competition that year, too.
1998 was the year that changed everything. Backed by powerful management, his appearance at Just For Laughs was the toast of the festival and Fox gave him a $500,000 development deal. A few months later, Los Enchiladas, the feature film he wrote, directed, and starred in, premiered at Sundance – the same month that his Comedy Central Presents half-hour special went into regular rotation on cable.
But what goes up must come down. The Fox deal expired without a show, the film was poorly received at Sundance and never released. Mitch’s unique brand wasn’t as easy to translate to other formats as he’d hoped. So he doubled down on stand-up and decided that his true calling was on the road – a stool, a microphone, a glass (or three) of vodka, and that ubiquitous notebook of jokes was all he would need in life. Well, almost all he would need. 12 FILMS 13 FILMS Over the next six years, Mitch became more and more beloved by comedy fans and critics – quickly becoming one of the rare comics without a successful TV show to consistently sell out comedy clubs coast to coast.
But something else was growing, too: his propensity for an increasingly alarming lifestyle fueled by booze, pills, and eventually (and sadly) heroin.
It was no secret that Mitch enjoyed the creative effects of drugs, but the extent of his drug use was either unrecognized or swept under the rug in light of his meteoric stand-up success. Rumors of his drug habit started spreading as he began bringing in substantial amounts of money headlining colleges and theaters.
His perpetual tour took an abrupt hiatus when he was arrested in Austin, Texas in June 2003 for drug possession and had to undergo a complicated surgery to save his leg from a gangrenous, drug-related sore.
Mitch bounced back and went on tour with Lewis Black and Dave Attell to rave reviews. But his next tour, co-headlined by Stephen Lynch, was riddled by frequently erratic performances. Many began to see the writing on the wall.
After a weekend of sold-out shows at Caroline’s, Mitch and his wife, Lynn, went off the grid, missing a stint at The Funny Bone in Richmond, Virginia. Everyone’s worst fears were realized when first responders were unable to revive Mitch after a drug overdose in his New Jersey hotel room on March 29, 2005.
One of comedy’s most promising talents was gone at age 37 – like so many in the industry, far too soon.
14 FILMS “On the page, his humor might seem simple, even a little silly, but when delivered in his beat-poet voice it was like listening to a creature that had fallen to Earth.”
– DANIEL FIERMAN, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
15 FILMS “It’s impossible to capture his unique delivery in print. He stretched words out to three times their normal length, conspicuously omitted contractions, stressed syllables with the randomness of someone just learning the language. Stand-up was his native language; anything else would have been a clumsy adaptation. We’re lucky, in a way, that he never crossed over. There’s something sacred about the untranslatable.”
– SAM ANDERSON, THE NEW YORK TIMES
16 FILMS ORIGIN STORY
Not much is known about Mitch’s formative years, before becoming a known entity in the comedy world.
But every story starts somewhere, and the foundation for who we become is always established in our youth.
In an age where origin stories rule at the box office, chronicling the early years of Mitch – what influenced and shaped him – will provide a richer understanding of how and why he became the Mitch Hedberg so many know and still love today.
What was Mitch like as a kid and teenager?
What compelled him to hit the road at age 18?
What sculpted his unique sense of humor?
When did he find his voice onstage?
His early friends and fellow comedians will tell the stories rarely, if ever, heard before.
17 FILMS “I love traveling man, I love moving on. I think moving on gives you a fresh start every day. And I think waking up someplace new is great. My theory is not to stop and smell the roses. My theory is to find the roses then go find more roses in another city.”
18 FILMS ROAD DOG
Mitch lived on the road. But he only worked an hour a day.
The rest of the time he was out there, getting lost, exploring, and daydreaming.
Everywhere he went, he met and interacted with fascinating characters from fellow comedians to increasingly adoring fans as his following gained momentum, snowballing down the mountain, morphing into something that couldn’t possibly be ignored.
These friendships and interactions with other comedians and fans alike are all filled with touching and hilarious moments which reaffirm that in spite of his demons, Mitch was an incredibly genuine and sweet guy with a huge heart and an unbelievably special, positive, and clever aura surrounding him.
From tipping his full per diem to hotel staff and buying broke college students an air conditioner, to even swapping numbers with a lucky fan and randomly texting him months later, there was never a dull moment in Mitch’s life. So luckily we’re left with no shortage of great stories today to shape our vision of who he really was outside of the spotlight.
19 FILMS “When you’re a comic on the road, you have one hour of full employment in a day and twenty-three hours of nothing to do but wander and pass the time.”
20 FILMS ASPIRI NG FILMMAKER
Another focal point is the folklore surrounding Mitch’s unreleased 1999 film, Los Enchiladas. A film that he self-financed for $100,000 and showed promise at Sundance but was ultimately never distributed. Its stars – Dave Attell, Marc Maron, Todd Barry, and Mitch himself – have gone on to be pillars of the comedy world. But the film itself has largely fallen by the wayside, only screened a handful of times over the years to small audiences of Mitch’s biggest fans.
In an age when everything is instantly available at our fingertips, how did this happen? In some ways it’s like the cult hit The Room, and the story of it being made might be more interesting than the movie itself, especially when viewed through a Searching For Sugar Man lens.
21 FILMS “Usually if you can please everybody, it’s because you’re not doing anything unique. But Mitch was unique, and he still had mass appeal.”
– DOUG STANHOPE
22 FILMS MITCH’S MATERIAL
Mitch constantly wrote down his thoughts and musings as he worked through his jokes in countless notebooks over the years.
He left behind incredibly rich records of his life and his humor – all scrawled out in that architecturally-influenced yet distinctively-Mitch handwriting.
This material will be utilized to enable the film to create beautiful, bespoke motion graphics that make Mitch’s words come alive.
He also loved videotaping and photographing everything, from his formative comedy days in Seattle through to the very end.
All of this will add a robust layer of original, first-hand archival that will allow the documentary to offer an authentic, never-before-seen look inside Mitch’s journey through comedy and the world.
23 FILMS “His material was so eclectic and out there. And he kept his eyes closed, he wasn’t jumping around. Yet everyone in the room was into his stuff, and you were like, ‘Wow! I’m, like, watching a movement here.’” – DAVE ATTELL
24 FILMS “The more you write your own ticket, the better. Because people aren’t going to run you.”
25 FILMS DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
For as long as I can remember I’ve love stand-up comedy and Mitch Hedberg continues to be my favorite stand-up comedian of all time. He was one of the most unique performers – with one of the most original voices – I’ve ever seen live.
I first met Mitch when I was 18, back in 2002, and ended up hanging out three more times after shows with him over the next few years. He was always unbelievably kind and gracious to me.
I had hoped to make a vérité tour documentary about Mitch’s life on the road as my NYU film school senior thesis project, but I never had the chance to pursue that after Mitch died in 2005. The idea has still been percolating ever since.
Sixteen years have now passed and it’s safe to say that Mitch isn’t at the foreground of most people’s minds anymore. His website is gone and his press coverage has slowed to a trickle of retrospective articles and reposts of old interviews and memes of his jokes on the anniversaries of his death.
Mitch was one of the few people whose creativity and passion inspired me to follow my own creative dreams. I feel an immense gratitude and overwhelming desire to help keep his story alive, to remind those who have forgotten what a genius he was, and to introduce him to the next generation.
26 FILMS To me, Mitch is far more than just a funny guy. He’s someone who lived life his own way. He wasn’t deterred by conventional thought and always stayed true to himself.
But Mitch is still all around us today. His material was so clever and yet so universal to the commonalities of everyday life, that every single day I’m reminded of his jokes and can’t help but laugh. Every time I take an escalator, eat a banana, animal crackers or jellybeans, smell a cinnamon roll, walk into Target, see a duck, have a Kit Kat, buy Pringles, play tennis, pass a vending machine, or when I’m on a waiting list at a restaurant.
He put such a unique slant on the mundane that people who know his jokes are rarely able to look at the world around them the same way again. There he is, again and again, still just as poignant as ever. He’s in the horoscopes, in The New York Times crossword, and in clues on Jeopardy. He’s still there if you know where to look.
Now I want to bring him front and center – back into the spotlight for everyone to rediscover.
Stitching all these elements together to create a beautiful film worthy of Mitch’s legacy – weaving in and out of the narrative of his life, not just through his TV appearances and comedy, but also his personal recordings, home videos, photos, and journals in that distinctive handwriting. A deep dive into the surreal mind of a true comedy genius that also showcases the sweetheart he was offstage, too.
I want the whole world to see the guy I got to meet after the shows.
You know, Mitch.
– Jeff Siegel 27 FILMS “Young comedians are always trying to ape someone else. Even when they’re good you can always tell where their infuence was. ‘This guy is doing a Seinfeld with a twist.’ ‘That guy is doing Sam Kinison toned down a notch.’ And then you see someone like Mitch, and it’s like his brain was put in backwards.”
– CONAN O’BRIEN 28 FILMS “There are all kinds of great stories about Mitch: about how he found out some fans had driven six hours to see him so he got them a hotel room, how George Carlin was once in the audience for one of his shows and said ‘that blind guy is amazing,’ how he paid for a sold-out audience in Pittsburgh to all have shots of tequila.”
– MIKE BIRBIGLIA
29 FILMS NEXT STEPS
The research and development is well underway. We’ve accumulated over seven hundred articles and interviews with Mitch. We’ve spoken with many of Mitch’s closest friends, acquaintances, and industry associates from his journey rising through the comedy ranks. We’ve begun gathering archival material from his radio and TV appearances, interview recordings, and from photographers who shot with him. Everything is being boiled down into a massive, comprehensive timeline of Mitch’s life – the most complete gathering of his story ever compiled. The process is moving ahead.
What we need is the attachment of the right person – who sees the potential in the project and has the same reverence for Mitch that we do – to come onboard and help build the momentum of the film.
This will open doors to premiere financiers, platforms, and distributors, allow access to the rare, original materials we need, and help secure top-tier talent for interviews – with David Letterman, Kevin Hart, Howard Stern, Dave Chappelle, Ellen DeGeneres, Joe Rogan, Mike Judge, Steven Wright, Conan O'Brien, Marc Maron, Cameron Crowe, and Artie Lange topping the list.
30 FILMS “I’d be happiest just doing stand-up, but with enough exposure so people knew who I was. The difference between a star comic and a comic who can fill some seats is a TV show. It’s as simple as that. Part of my downfall, perhaps, is that instead of concentrating on getting a show and having meetings with executives, I’m out there on the road.”
31 FILMS “The past eighteen years of Mitch Hedberg’s life have been a comic-toxic mix of booze, drugs, lost highways and stand-up comedy.”
– MATT PEIKEN, ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS
32 FILMS “People always say that comedy has this tragic side to it and the life of a comedian is really, really hard, and that’s true. But Mitch loved that life. You get to live a kind of outlaw life on some level. You don’t have an alarm clock, you get to write, you get to drink on the job, stay up late, keep your hair long. Mitch lived his life and did what he wanted to do the way he wanted to do it. The only sad part is we know how it ended.”
– LYNN SHAWCROFT
33 FILMS FILMS
The original intellectual property contained in this deck is exclusive property of Jeff Siegel Films. Archival material is used for illustrative purposes only and is not licensed for commercial use. © 2021 Jeff Siegel Films. All Rights Reserved.