The first time I heard the term “stopper” was in 1986 or thereabouts. A friend was describing the personality tendency of a guy we both knew and had worked with. He was inclined to not feed the fire or keep the ball in the air but to say “wait, I don’t know…does this work? I’m not convinced.” There’s a specific type of energy that you need to have in a room when you’re talking about stories or a screenplay, and “stoppers” always get in the way of that. You need stoppers at the table when you’re figuring out finance or budgets or physical production logistics because you need a realistic mind that knows how the world works, but they’re lethal when it comes to dreaming stuff up. Is this a David Cronenberg film?