Alumni Profile: Lyle Drescher ('19)

Alumni Profile: Lyle Drescher ('19)

Mar 11 2020

Recently we had thegreat pleasure of connecting with FMA alum Lyle Drescher (FMA '19) where we were able to talk about how he worked toward the long time dream he had of working at Adult Swim. 

INTERVIEW with Lyle below: 

Can you say a little bit about your path to interning at Adult Swim? 
I’ve wanted to intern there since I was 13. In middle school I made this little DVD of some short films I’d made that I spliced up with Adult Swim promos and the network watermark to make it look like I had my own show. I was gonna bring it into my interview but I thought it was maybe too sappy. 

The process of actually getting there took a while. I met someone during an internship at the Good Good Comedy Theater here in Philly who had a show on Adult Swim. We became friendly and I asked him if he would let me PA on the set of his new season, and he very very graciously said yes. I spent a summer PAing in Atlanta, and that experience led me to interview for an internship at the Adult Swim headquarters in March of 2018. I flew down, did the interview in person, and didn’t get the job. Then I applied again the next year, did a video interview, and didn’t get it. 

By this point I’d pretty much given up, but I’d been doing a lot of marketing work for this comedy club I created at Temple, so the year after I decided to apply for an internship in the Adult Swim marketing department and sent them some of my stuff. They called me for an interview and now I’m here!

What surprised you the most about the professional world so far? 

When I was in film school and could just sleep until noon, go to class when I felt like it, and generally had more freedom, I was very resistant to the idea of a real job taking that freedom away. But dear lord, was I wrong. The structure that the professional world provides is awesome and oddly made me even more productive than when I had more time to be. And I say that as someone who used to be STAUNCHLY against it.

What is your fondest Temple classroom memory?

Michael Kutemeyer’s Videography class had us create a fake TV show of various segments centered around one theme. Funnily, it’s very similar to this Adult Swim show called Off The Air. My friends and I made ours about bugs and called it Bug TV. I dressed as a cockroach and walked around campus drinking a big jug of water labelled “bug juice”. It was very dumb and fun to make. Also, any class I took with Chaim Bianco or Catherine Pancake was great.

What's a Temple place (or food) that you miss the most?

The Bell Tower. It’s a nice, central landmark. You see it, you know where you are, life feels certain.

What advice would you give to current Temple students?

Don’t join clubs, start them. If you can’t find a club or a group of friends or a place within Temple where you feel like you belong, you need to create it. If you love anime or frisbee or whatever it is, form a community around it. I did that with stand up comedy and it changed my life. So make the anime frisbee club. Sounds sick. 

How would you recommend finding work in the field during and immediately following school?

Exit this page right now and go to Twitter. Type your favorite TV show into the search bar. Click on the “People” tab. Find someone who works on that TV show who has less than 10k followers and DM them asking if they might be willing to chat on the phone with you for 15-20 minutes. They will have much better advice than me. I used to do this as a freshman and it led to me being able to talk to some really cool and interesting people. Try not to be scared; I think people are generally willing to help out others with their time, and even if they’re not that’s okay too.

We're so excited about Lyle's successes and look forward to more big things from him!

 

 

 

Scroll to Top