Interview with Pedro Hernandez - Lead Actor for Their Eyes Were Watching Gummybears

That's an interesting title, how'd you come up with it?

My roommate from college wrote it, I think he just liked the play off Their Eyes Were Watching God.

What's it about?

It's a coming of age story, a guy in his senior year in college trying to choose between a career and a woman, and gummy bears play a big part in that.

Did you have any part of writing it?

I'm the lead actor in it, but I did have a big part in the development of the script...like I said the writer is my best friend, we were college buddies, frat brothers.

Is this your first lead in a film?

Yeah it sure is, it's the biggest thing I've done to this point you could say, and it felt really good. It was alot of fun to do.

So what's next for you?

What's next for me, well we're still riding this short out, still have a few festivals to go to. I've gotten a couple of best actor nominations, so just trying to shop it around. We would like to pitch it as a series so we're treating this short as a pilot. So yeah, trying to move on from there. I'm also a stand up comic so I'm always doing that.

What do you want people to take away from this film after they've seen it?

I'd like for them to first of all laugh, it IS a comedy. And after that I think the whole point of us doing this is to showcase black people in a light that you haven't quite seen us in. It IS a black movie but it has nothing to do with being black. We were just seniors at Princeton University, we shot at Princeton, we're alumni from there, so we just sort of wanted to highlight our experience from there, and our experience there wasn't about being black, it was about being human, it was about being normal, and growing up and having fun.

Their Eyes were watching Gummybears premiered at the Holly Shorts Film Festival on Thursday at 12 pm.

You can get more information about this movie at http://gummybearsthemovie.com/

Interview by Elesia Marie