Greg & Lou present Lou & Greg is Greg Burke, AJ Morales, and Lou Perez. Blending elements of stage and film, Greg & Lou have performed sketch comedy to sold-out audiences across the country and are proud to call the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre in NYC their home. In 2009, their pilot “Blog of a Pool Boy” won the Best Comedy Pilot and Best Actor Awards at the New York Television Festival. On the last day of the TC Comedy Arts Festival, their short film “Wolverine’s Claws Suck” tied for first place in our Comedy Shorts Contest. We caught up with the trio shortly before accepting their trophy from Michael Moore to get their thoughts on the festival, Traverse City and what’s coming up next for the group.

Lou Perez, AJ Morales and Greg Burke

Traverse City Film Festival: How did you all meet?

Greg Burke: We originally met at NYU in 2002. We were performing together in a popular group called HammerKatz at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade (UCB) Theatre. It was a great time – we had shows sold out the whole year round.

AJ Morales: The only problem was it was a cast of nine doing 30-minute shows, so everyone only had 3-4 minutes per person on stage. After awhile, we broke up into separate groups, and that’s when this act came together [in late 2006].

TCFF: Your show today was a mix of video clips with live sketches. Is that the format you usually present at your events?

Greg: It’s kind of an interweaving of two different styles of our shows – the videos and the live sketches. So it’s more of a hybrid.

TCFF: In your mind, how did it go today?

Lou Perez: It’s such a weird thing – I still feel nervous, even though it’s over. It’s the biggest house we’ve ever played before. And there were real theater elements – the curtains and the spotlight, all of that.

Greg: It was just a big long nightmare, really.

Lou: (laughs) Right, and I kept waking up in the middle of it.

Greg: The crowd was amazing though. This festival has been great.

TCFF: Talk a little about your writing process and where your ideas for sketches come from.

Greg: A lot of it comes out of us just hanging out and riffing on bits.

Lou: If you get a group of comedians together, and you’re a civilian, you’re going to be annoyed. Because we’re always trying to one-up each other. We will take a funny premise or joke and just kill it.

Greg: And make you watch the murder.

AJ: We like a lot of genre stuff, too. The Die Hard video and the interrogation sketch, those come from things we like.

TCFF: What are your impressions of Traverse City so far?

Greg: Our flight from Detroit was delayed, so we didn’t get to see as much as we hoped. I would’ve loved to have, I don’t know, gone ice fishing or something. (laughs)

AJ: Our driver was telling us all of these horrible things about winter up here – how deer hit your cars all the time, snowmobilers get lost, people go missing and their bodies don’t show up until spring. If Stephen King moved here, you guys would be f****ed.

Lou: Actually, one funny thing that happened here was when we needed to buy a cricket bat, which is used in one of our sketches. So we went to MC Sports to look for one. And I look around, and there is this huge wall of guns – semi-automatics, rifles, whatever, just out in the open. I was amazed by that. Especially when I was checking one out and this kid next to me said, “That one’s fun.”

Greg: Unless you kill your way out of the store, you can’t get your hands on a gun in Manhattan. It just doesn’t happen.

TCFF: What’s next for you guys? Anything coming down the pipeline?

Greg: I’m working on pitches for original sitcoms, writing new sketches for the web and YouTube, and performing at the UCB Theatre. I was also just in “Mystery Team,” the Derrick Comedy film that played at Sundance.

Lou: I’ll be watching “Mystery Team” on Netflix, as well as performing stand-up in New York.

TCFF: Do the three of you do comedy full-time, or do you also have day jobs?

Greg: We all have jobs. I work for a market research company in New York.

Lou: I work in my family’s property management business, and I previously was teaching English at the undergrad level.

AJ: I actually have a fun day job – I’m a designer for a video game company.

Lou: But we’re all busy writing and working on the side. We write screenplays and pilots, go to auditions and all that. Really, it’s as if we all have two full-time jobs. When the day comes that I get paid to do this full-time – that will be the definition of success to me.

For more information on Greg & Lou Present Lou & Greg, and to watch the group’s sketches, visit www.gregandlou.com.