I contacted Marcarelli two and a half years ago, when I first heard the story of his imprisonment behind horn-rims. But he said to try him again in a year. The next time, he said eight months; the time after that, the end of summer 2010. The revision of his Verizon contract has made Marcarelli’s decision to finally talk an easier one, as has his desire to publicize his first big post–Test Man project: The Green, a film he recently wrote and co-produced, starring Jason Butler Harner and Julia Ormond. The movie centers on how a small town slowly turns against a gay couple when one of the men, a schoolteacher, gets ensnared in scandal.

Walking down West Ninth Street near Fifth Avenue, Marcarelli recalls the day in 1994 when he and his high-school friend (and fellow struggling actor) Jen Davis were looking for housing and found a steal on that very block: a one-bedroom in a pre-war townhouse, featuring a stained-glass skylight and the romance of having served as the model for Jimmy Stewart’s apartment in Rear Window. The $835 monthly rent was split among Davis, Marcarelli, and his boyfriend, Rick Gradone.

Marcarelli landed a job doing 30-second commercial spots for Old Navy. “I bought one of those bells that they have at reception desks at hotels,” he said. “Every time one of us saw the commercial, we would hit the bell, because we knew another check was coming”—one worth anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand, depending on circumstances.

In 1998, Marcarelli, Davis, and a few other actors formed Mobius Group, a theater company in the Village, to put on lesser-known works donated by playwrights such as Eric Bogosian and Warren Leight.

Then came the Verizon gig. “When he called to tell us he got the Verizon job, I was driving and I had to pull over,” says Cynthia Silver, a member of Mobius Group. She remembers him exclaiming, “Think of all the plays we can put on!”

At first, Marcarelli was embarrassed about his role as Test Man, but over time he made his peace with it. “The reality was, it was a job,” he says. His contract obligated him to work a couple hundred days a year, which amounted to between 20 and 40 commercials and a steady flow of live events. He offered his catchphrase in front of 85,000 football fans during the halftime show of the Buffalo Bills’ 2002 season opener. “Up to that point,” Marcarelli says, “I hadn’t played to a house larger than 99 seats.”

This peculiar brand of fame was frequently awkward, however. At a cousin’s wedding, he wore “the grayest of gray suits,” but still wound up feeling “like a cafone—Italian for “oaf”—when more people lined up to take pictures with him than with the bride. A few months ago, he attended his grandmother’s funeral. As her body was being lowered into the ground, he heard the hushed voice of a family friend: “Can you hear me now?”