Biography
Mitch Hedberg first saw the light of day and grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, yet he launched his stand-up career in Florida, drawn there by the climate instead of any reputation the state held for humor. Once he had sharpened his material in that setting, he shifted to Seattle and began working stages throughout the Pacific Northwest. His initial television slot arrived on MTV’s Comikaze after he personally pitched the act to the show’s talent coordinator. A decisive break followed in 1996 with an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, one so effective that Letterman himself recited lines from the set later in the same broadcast. In 1997 Hedberg claimed first place at the Seattle Comedy Competition and finished his independently produced feature Los Enchiladas! While commanding headline nights at clubs nationwide, he obtained a development agreement with Fox for a prospective sitcom and took a role in the film Almost Famous. Comedy Central Records put out both Mitch All Together and Strategic Grill Locations in 2003 and underwrote a tour that paired Hedberg with Lewis Black and Dave Attell. His upward trajectory ended abruptly on March 30, 2005, when a heart attack attributed to “multiple drug toxicity” claimed him at age 37. A posthumous assembly of unreleased recordings titled Do You Believe in Gosh? surfaced in 2008.