Bad Ben Franklin Changes Name

April 11, 2005

by Philip Siciliano

Bad Ben Franklin – you’ve heard the name, but not for much longer. The video sketch comedy crew, which is really a big group of CSI students and alumni doing what they love to do, will officially change their name to “A Dan Amongst Dans.”

How did they come up with that name? “All I’ll say is that most of the guys in the group are or were CSI Cinema Studies majors,” said BBF member John Szeluga. “At one time it seemed that there were an unusually high number of cinema students named ‘Dan,’ so many that the name ‘Dan’ became a term we used to refer to a typical cinema student.”

If you haven’t read The Banner in a while you may be asking, “So who are these guys?” It all started with John Szeluga and Chris Sorrentino. In high school the two were creating short films for CTV, a community television channel based on Staten Island. Szeluga and Sorrentino both had a passion for sketch comedy so they put their heads together and started creating movies. When the two came to CSI, they met Bryan McGuckin, Frank LaMonaca, Eric Beyer, Dan Johnson, and the rest of the gang that formed Bad Ben Franklin.

“I love making people laugh,” said Szeluga. “There is nothing better than a room full of people laughing at something you helped put together. It’s what I love to do.”

They are known Island-wide for their short film, “Girl-Arm.” (You can actually snag a Girl-Arm T-Shirt on their website (www.badbenfranklin.com). They made the video more than three years ago but people still quote lines from it and recognize BBF for it. A lot of the dialogue was improvised and there’s some great chemistry between the actors in the movie. “I like the style of it,” said Szeluga.

You will be able to see “Girl-Arm” and other titles by Bad Ben Franklin, or A Dan Amongst Dans on their upcoming DVD due out this spring. Also in the works is a new comedy which will feature lots of animation and special effects, as well as original music.

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