4PLAY: TAMPA Carlos Treviño Int Pt 1

Part one of an interview with FOURPLAY: TAMPA screenwriter Carlos Treviño who also plays the film's very hunky military recruiter! Opppss, I think I'm revealing too much of a prior lifetime's military fetish. - Kyle

-------------------

What and/or who inspired you to write TAMPA?

I needed to write something funny to counterbalance the two dramas I’d written for our FOURPLAY series. Around that time, I’d been given a compendium of Tom of Finland’s work. Tom was this gay porn illustrator who worked from the 1950s through the 90s creating erotic and fetish art that has become iconic in the gay community. So in one of these volumes of his work is this hilarious public men's' restroom scene. It starts with two guys alone in the restroom, scoping each other out at the urinals. One by one, various hyper-masculine Tom of Finland types wander in and join in the fun. It ends in this ridiculous butt-fucking conga line where everyone comes at once and leaves very happy and chummy. To adhere to the FOURPLAY theme (transgressive sex that is transcendent for one or more of the participants), I needed a character for whom this scenario could be both trial and triumph. So I started by placing someone very un-Tom of Finland into the scene; someone none of Tom’s guys would even look at: not chiseled, not masculine, not hung like an elephant. A sympathetic underdog on his quest for anonymous sex. As the writing went on, I discovered that making these other guys less Tom-like and more realistic only added to the pathos of our hero getting rejected by them over and over again.