The Verizon guy comes out, talks about anti-gay abuse he endured while playing Test Man character

[Bluebear]

Now that the long run of Verizon's "Can You Hear Me Now?" campaign is over, actor Paul Marcarelli has come out and is talking about the anti-gay abuse he endured while playing the character known as Test Man.

Marcarelli has a home in Guilford, Connecticut, and five summers ago, kids in an SUV began driving past at night, yelling, “Can you hear me now?” Later, says Marcarelli, “they started screaming ‘faggot’ up at my house. It got progressively more profane as the years went by.” One night, it happened while some friends were over, and he decided to call the police. “As soon as I hung up the phone,” he says, “I realized that in order for them to do anything about it, it would have to become a report that would go into a police log.” Worried about the publicity—and the questions that might ensue if it came out that the actor playing Test Man was gay—he declined to file a report.

Marcarelli has produced and written a film titled The Green, which "centers on how a small town slowly turns against a gay couple when one of the men, a schoolteacher, gets ensnared in scandal." His movie is currently being pitched to film festivals.

http://www.joemygod.blogspot.com/

[PVnRT]

1. He's gay?

How in the hell could anyone infer that from the commercials?

[Bluebear]

2. dunno!

[bighughdiehl]

3. umm....

How did people know he was gay from the commercials? Or are we missing something else here?

[Bluebear]

4. Kids from his hometown taunted him as a gay man, irrespective of his commercial

And he could not file charges because he might lose his gig, if that clears it up for you.

[Bluebear]

5. hello?

[originalpckelly]

8. Oh come on...

well dressed man addicted to his cell phone, who has boyish good looks? Can't see that?

I always knew I had an irresistible urge to fuck him.

[sarcasmo]

6. Small towns can be brutal, left one years ago and never go back.

[originalpckelly]

7. What you do is kindly ask them to stop calling you faggot...

and if that fails, beat the shit out of them with an aluminum baseball bat and ask, "Can you hear me now?"