For a long time, censors have been cutting my works. This makes

Host:
The editing room was dim — a cave of flickering light and tired air, heavy with the smell of celluloid and dust. The walls were lined with reels, some labeled, most forgotten, their spines marked by time. A single projector lamp flickered against the concrete, spilling trembling bands of white light across Jack’s face. His hands were stained with splices of film, bits of tape, fragments of stories torn apart.

Jeeny stood by the window, her reflection fractured by the rain-streaked glass. The city beyond pulsed like a slow, broken heartbeat — lights blurred by the drizzle, sirens fading into the distance.

Host:
There was a kind of haunted silence here, the kind that exists between creation and ruin. The faint hum of the projector filled the room like an anxious whisper.

Jeeny: (softly) “Dario Argento once said, ‘For a long time, censors have been cutting my works. This makes me so sad, because many times they will tell me, "Television won’t like, so we have to cut, cut, cut!"’”

Host:
Jack lifted his eyes slowly from the strip of film in his hand — a frame of a woman running through a corridor of shadows. He smiled, but it wasn’t joy; it was something hollow, like the aftertaste of a lost dream.

Jack: “Censors... They don’t just cut film, Jeeny. They cut truth. They trim the rawness until what’s left is something polite, something dead.”

Jeeny: (turning toward him) “Or maybe they’re afraid of what truth looks like when it’s unedited.”

Host:
The lamp hummed louder. The light shook across the wall, flickering like an argument trying to escape.

Jack: “Afraid? No. They’re comfortable. That’s worse. They want everything tidy — stories that end neatly, characters that behave. No blood, no madness, no mirror held to the ugliness we all pretend not to see.”

Jeeny: “But isn’t that what art does? It disturbs so that we can see more clearly?”

Jack: (grimly) “Exactly. And that’s why they silence it.”

Host:
He fed another reel through the machine, the spinning sound rising like wind through a graveyard. The projection came alive again — flashes of a man screaming, a window shattering, color blooming like a wound.

Jeeny: “You sound like Argento himself.”

Jack: “Maybe I understand him. Every time they censor, they don’t just erase images — they amputate meaning. You spend your life creating something visceral, and they slice away its pulse.”

Jeeny: (quietly) “But maybe what survives the cuts — that’s where the power hides. What’s left unshown becomes imagination.”

Host:
Jack’s eyes met hers, glinting with both fury and fatigue. The light stuttered across his features, half-angel, half-ghost.

Jack: “Imagination isn’t freedom when it’s forced. When they decide what you’re allowed to dream, that’s not art anymore. That’s a leash.”

Jeeny: “And yet, even leashed art still breathes. Maybe it whispers instead of screams, but it endures.”

Host:
Her voice carried a tremor of hope, a fragile thing in a room built on disillusionment. Jack looked back at the film — the woman on the screen was still running, eternally trapped between one frame and the next.

Jack: “You call that endurance? To be silenced, again and again, until the world only knows the fragments of what you meant?”

Jeeny: “Sometimes fragments tell more truth than perfection ever could. What’s incomplete forces people to look closer.”

Host:
A heavy silence fell. The projector clicked and sputtered, then stopped. The room went dark except for the dull glow of the cigarette in Jack’s hand.

He inhaled deeply, then exhaled a trail of smoke that looked like a thought he couldn’t quite kill.

Jack: “They tell me, ‘Television won’t like it.’ As if truth should ever beg for permission to exist.”

Jeeny: “Maybe they’re not rejecting truth. Maybe they’re rejecting fear — their own fear. Some people would rather cut what they don’t understand than face it.”

Jack: “And that’s the death of art, Jeeny. When comfort becomes the standard of beauty.”

Host:
The rain outside grew heavier, smearing the city lights into indistinct rivers of color. Jeeny walked closer, her shadow joining his on the wall — two silhouettes carved out by the same wounded light.

Jeeny: “But isn’t sadness also part of creation? Argento said he was sad about the cuts, but also that his films gained longevity. Maybe what’s censored in one time survives in another.”

Jack: (bitterly) “Longevity born of mutilation.”

Jeeny: “No. Longevity born of resistance.”

Host:
Her eyes caught the projector’s reflection — they gleamed with conviction, with that stubborn faith she carried like a torch in the dark.

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s the secret of real art, Jack. It can’t be erased. You can slice it, bury it, hide it under polite versions — but truth bleeds through every cut.”

Jack: (quietly) “And yet, the artist still bleeds too.”

Jeeny: “Yes. But maybe that’s how the work lives — through the pain that created it.”

Host:
He turned to face her now. The tension between them softened into something almost tender, a shared fatigue that only creators — or survivors — could understand.

Jack: “You think the artist’s sadness is necessary?”

Jeeny: “Not necessary. Inevitable. But it’s what turns the cut into meaning.”

Host:
The light flickered again as the projector roared back to life. Across the screen, fragmented images returned: color, scream, silence, love, death — all the pieces that had been censored but never destroyed.

Jeeny: “Look at that. Even broken, it’s still beautiful.”

Jack: “No. It’s beautiful because it’s broken.”

Host:
Their words hung in the air, suspended between irony and truth. The film stuttered, then froze once more on the woman’s terrified face. The room fell silent again — the kind of silence that weighs like confession.

Jeeny: (softly) “You know... maybe censorship is the shadow that proves there’s light. They wouldn’t try to silence what didn’t have power.”

Jack: “Power that costs the artist everything.”

Jeeny: “Yes. But art that doesn’t cost you something isn’t art — it’s decoration.”

Host:
He chuckled, low and hoarse, like a man remembering laughter after a long winter.

Jack: “You really believe pain is the currency of creation, don’t you?”

Jeeny: “I believe pain is what keeps the heart honest.”

Host:
For a long moment, they just stood there — two silhouettes against the blank, waiting screen. Outside, the storm began to fade, replaced by a subtle, persistent hum of the waking city.

Jack walked over to the film reel, his fingers tracing the perforated edge, delicate as a wound.

Jack: “You know what I envy about Argento?”

Jeeny: “What?”

Jack: “That he was still sad about the cuts. It means he never got used to compromise.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe sadness is proof of integrity.”

Host:
Her words softened the edge of his gaze. He looked at her — the quiet rebellion in her stance, the unspoken ache behind her gentleness.

Jack: “Maybe. Maybe we’re all just frames being trimmed by the world until we fit its story.”

Jeeny: “Then our defiance is to keep our edges sharp.”

Host:
A long silence followed. Then, without a word, Jack flipped the projector back on. The light spilled once more — fractured, trembling, imperfect — but alive.

They stood together watching the incomplete film, every cut glowing with stubborn brilliance.

Jeeny: “See? Even censored, it speaks.”

Jack: (softly) “Because truth always finds a way to bleed through.”

Host:
The rain outside had stopped completely now. The light from the projector filled the room, painting their faces in motion — fragments of color, fragments of truth.

And in that trembling light, among the torn reels and unfinished frames, they stood not as victims of silence, but as keepers of the unfinished — two hearts uncut, glowing through every attempt to dim them.

When the film ended, the screen went white, not as an erasure, but as an open space — a beginning waiting to be seen.

And in that silence, the cuts no longer mattered. Only the light remained.