Stay Hungry

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.

Roger Callard, one of the top bodybuilders of that era, was quoted in a 1983 bodybuilding magazine regarding an event he experienced during the making of the film. “The director was screaming over his megaphone, ‘Please do not touch the bodybuilders!’ People were rushing us, even scratching us!”

Schwarzenegger won a Golden Globe for "Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture" for his portrayal of Joe Santo in Stay Hungry. Technically, it was not his debut role, since he had played Hercules (as "Arnold Strong") in the 1970 film Hercules in New York and a hitman in Robert Altman's 1973 film The Long Goodbye. It was, however, the first time his voice had been heard on film as Hercules was dubbed and the hitman character was deaf and mute.

Read more about Stay Hungry:  Plot, Production, Differences Between Film and Novel, Response

Famous quotes containing the words stay and/or hungry:

    I know that each stage is not going to last forever. I used to think that when he was little. Whenever he was in a bad stage I thought that he was going to be like that for the rest of his life and that I’d better do something to shape him up. When he was in a good state, I thought he was going to be a perfect child and I would never have to worry; he was always going to stay that way.
    —Anonymous Parent of An Eight-Year-Old. As quoted in Between Generations by Ellen Galinsky, ch. 4 (1981)

    When one is hungry one is not choosy about one’s food.
    Chinese proverb.