Will Sloan, left, and Justin Decloux record an episode for their podcast, The Important Cinema Club, in Justin’s home in Toronto on Tuesday.DUANE COLE/The Globe and Mail
The podcasting landscape has undergone a rapid transformation over the past few years, evolving from a mobile listening experience populated by broke comedians and public radio hosts into a celebrity branding exercise that people watch on their screens.
Amidst the brazen corporatization of this democratic medium, heroes of the halcyon days persist, eschewing upscale downtown studios for two mics and an old laptop on a folding table. Justin Decloux and Will Sloan are two such figures.
This past November marked the 10th anniversary of The Important Cinema Club, the Toronto-based podcast hosted by Decloux and Sloan, two fixtures of the city’s film scene. It’s not the largest film podcast – far from it. They don’t do ad reads. They don’t book big-name guests. And their roughly 1,200 or so paid Patreon subscribers are a fraction of comparable programs such as Blank Check. But, for this writer’s money, it’s the best show of its kind on the market.
Like so many great things, it started at the movies.
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Sloan and Decloux got to know each other through the Laser Blast Film Society, a screening series Decloux co-hosted with TIFF Midnight Madness programmer Peter Kuplowsky at the Royal Theatre. Decloux was looking to start a new podcast to indulge in his filmic interests and figured that Sloan – whom he had bonded with over Jackie Chan flicks – would be a good co-host. After a screening one night, Decloux broached the idea, luring Sloan in with the promise of discussing one of his most prurient interests: Jerry Lewis.
“I don’t think I had any monetary thing in mind,” Decloux recalls. “I had done podcasts before to audiences of no one. I just like it because I’m not the most social person and it’s an excuse to have long conversations with people.”
”I said yes because I had nothing better to do,” Sloan adds.
November marked the 10th anniversary of the Toronto-based podcast hosted by Decloux and Sloan, pictured.DUANE COLE/The Globe and Mail
The show was never meant to be a serious endeavour. Even the name was chosen by Decloux as a sardonic joke. But from the jump, it became clear the two were kindred podcasting spirits, with complementary personalities – Decloux the boisterous tone-setter and Sloan the urbane reactor – and an unshakable mutual respect built on shared taste and a desire for discovery.
Grey-haired and bespectacled, Sloan and Decloux look the part of archetypal film nerds, but their milquetoast appearances belie a level of inquiry that greatly outstrips that of a typical Letterboxd user.
Each episode is designed as a “one-stop intro to a topic,” says Sloan, most often tackling a director’s oeuvre, but sometimes shedding light on actors, microgenres, national cinemas, film critics, broader themes, or anything that strikes their fancy. After introducing the topic, the hosts discuss three or four representative films for roughly 20 minutes before offering closing thoughts.
This is followed by a selection of listener letters, and then a “back matter” segment devoted to movie news, Blu-ray releases, or recent filmgoing experiences. Here, they often highlight goings-on in their home base, a conscious decision to let people know that Toronto is a great film city.
“It’s important to have some sense that there are guardrails, but otherwise our rhythm, our chemistry, even so much of our format just kind of organically came over time,” Sloan explains.
That simplicity sets The Important Cinema Club apart from many other film podcasts, which often find their runtimes ballooning beyond the length of the movies under discussion as hosts conduct endless riff parades. The beauty of it is that each episode can be a starting or an endpoint for a given subject depending on how much it piques your interest. Decloux and Sloan help you take the first step; the rest of the path is up to you.
The Important Cinema Club was a name chosen by Decloux, pictured, as a sardonic joke.DUANE COLE/The Globe and Mail
The other defining trait of The Important Cinema Club is its breadth of coverage, investigating everything from the arthouse to the grindhouse. Take, for example, a three-episode stretch last spring, one devoted to Jia Zhangke, the Chinese master considered one of the most important directors of the 21st century; another looking at Tim Kincaid, a director best known for making taboo-busting gay pornography under the moniker Joe Gage; and an entire episode dedicated to ventriloquists on film.
The show is never better than when it’s looking at works outside the mainstream canon, digging deep to highlight no-budget horror hounds, Old Hollywood directors time forgot, foreign comedy teams that never made it to North America, or martial-arts directors that made a few masterpieces between hundreds of hours of schlock. Long-time listeners are deeply familiar with names that would leave many other cinephiles scratching their heads. If you know who Matt Farley, William Beaudine, or Bruce Le (not Bruce Lee) is, you’re part of the club.
“My dream since I was a teenager was discovering stuff and allowing other people to watch it… to have a kind of communal experience,” Decloux says, “and the podcast is the ultimate version of that.”
Sloan and Decloux have been full-time podcasters and freelancers since 2020, each hosting other shows beyond The Important Cinema Club. They occupy a rare sweet spot: earning a living without having to kowtow to any higher-ups. Both credit the podcast with raising their profile enough to secure more paid work and pursue other projects.
For example, the show’s modest-yet-ardent fandom is a built-in customer base for Gold Ninja Video, Decloux’s boutique Blu-ray label that gives the Criterion treatment to bargain bin movies. And Sloan readily admits that Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA, his book published last year surveying the films of the infamous B-movie director, wouldn’t exist without the show.
On mic, the pair sometimes say the show will end once it covers every topic in film history. It’s a joke, but like any good joke, there’s a grain of truth pressing up against the surface. Talking to them, it’s easy to imagine Sloan and Decloux in a retirement home exploring some far-flung corner of cinema they somehow haven’t yet reached – perhaps still recording on Decloux’s old laptop.
“What I love about cinema is that it’s a big house and there are many rooms,” Sloan said. As long as there are unopened doors, the podcast will persist.