High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Stay Hungry is a 1976 dramatic comedy film by director Bob Rafelson from a screenplay by Charles Gaines (adapted from his 1972 novel of the same name). The story centers on a young Birmingham, Alabama, scion, played by Jeff Bridges, who gets involved in a shady real-estate deal. In order to close the deal, he needs to buy a gym building to complete a multi-parcel lot. When he visits the gym, however, he finds himself romantically interested in the receptionist (Sally Field) and drawn to the carefree lifestyle of the Austrian body builder "Joe Santo" (Arnold Schwarzenegger) who is training there for the Mr. Universe competition.