Cut to the chase Informal

To get directly to the point or the most important part of something, skipping unnecessary detail or preamble.

It’s most often used as an impatient or efficiency-driven request — a polite (or not-so-polite) way of asking someone to stop stalling and say what actually matters.

The phrase comes from the vocabulary of early Hollywood screenwriting: since silent films couldn’t rely on dialogue, editors and writers treated an action-packed chase sequence as the most reliably exciting way to revive a scene that had grown slow, particularly in melodramas and romances. By 1939 it was standard trade jargon — the industry paper “Variety” recorded reporter Edwin C. Hill’s description of the formula, noting that when a picture needed livening up, “the formula always is ’cut to the chase.’” Screenwriter Helen Deutsch reportedly kept a sign over her desk at MGM reading “When in doubt, cut to the chase,” as a working reminder rather than a joke. The expression moved from a literal editing instruction into general figurative use by the mid-20th century — journalist Frank Scully used it that way in his 1955 memoir “Cross My Heart,” writing that he simply “cut to the chase” and got on with the matter at hand.

Let’s cut to the chase — are you accepting the offer or not?

I’ll cut to the chase: the project is over budget.

Stop explaining every detail and just cut to the chase.

A: “So, how did the meeting go?” B: “I’ll cut to the chase — we lost the client.”