If you’re not already watching Binging with Babish, you might want to consider joining the crowd—the 3.4 million YouTube subscribers, that is, who watch creator Andrew Rea turn fictional food from TV shows and movies into reality every week.

On Milk Street Radio, Rea spoke about the deep connection between food and film, some of the dishes—delicious to disgusting—that his fans have asked him to recreate, and what it’s like to be a one-man operation. He also revealed one of his favorite movies and the “secret sauce” for YouTube success.

Check out the excerpts below, and listen to the full interview here on Milk Street Radio.

On making the magic:

Since the beginning, I’ve pretty much independently created the show. It’s something that I originally was doing after work when my friends would be asleep and I needed a hobby. So since then, it started out being produced just by me and still pretty much is. I have another show called Basics with Babish, where I have a small film crew help me out, but it’s mostly just me... I shoot in my kitchen, in my apartment, and then I bring it over to the living room where I edit it. Then I’m usually posting it the next day.

On the grossest request he’s ever gotten:

Cheesy Blasters from “30 Rock,” which is just a hot dog stuffed with jack cheese, folded in a pizza. Let’s see… there are far more gross things that people have asked for. Most recently the car panini from “Family Guy,” where he dumps Vienna sausages, Doritos, peanut butter cups and a Cadbury Egg on a sandwich and toasts it up in his car. I had to make that and try it, and it was horrifying.

On going the distance:

The more seriously I take it, the more people seem to like that. For a video game called “Zelda: Breath of the Wild,” there’s a feature where you can cook to make potions or foods or whatever for health, and it’s basically a gigantic wok set over a fire. So I built a fire and I had a stand and a giant wok fabricated that resembled that, and it’s completely unnecessary. I could have made something that tastes exactly the same in a wok at home, but people definitely like how far I take it.

On the secret to his success:

People need to like you and feel how passionate you are about something. I would say the same thing to YouTubers: Find something you love so much you have to yell at other people about it. Just find something that drives you crazy and share it with the world, and that’s exactly what Julia [Child] did. She loved cooking, and I think nostalgia factor aside, even if she was a brand new face on the scene and no one had ever heard of her before, with her voice and her demeanor and her presence, I think she would crush—absolutely. I mean and that’s not always the case for successful YouTube channels, but for a lot of them, that is the secret sauce: It’s just pure, I’ll steal a term from “Seinfeld,” “unbridled enthusiasm” for the subject matter.

On his favorite movie:

When I tell people this, usually I get blank reactions because they haven’t seen it: “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” a Woody Allen movie. It’s a brilliant sort of dichotomy of severe drama and lighthearted comedy, and it’s also just this deep dark look into the human psyche and soul. At the same time, it’s crazily funny because it keeps going back and forth between the main story line and Woody Allen’s storyline, which are entirely separate until the end, when they just barely touch, and then they go their separate ways. So that’s my favorite movie of all time. I also love “12 Angry Men.” It’s so incredible that you’ve got a movie that is so gripping that never leaves one room and happens almost in real time.