Up Where We Belong

I mentioned in an earlier post that one of my favorite movies is An Officer and a Gentleman starring Richard Gere from 1982.  This great movie is about Zack Mayo (Gere) who tries to put his life on a better path by joining the Navy as an Officer's candidate.  He faces many challenges including dealing with a tough Drill Instructor played by Louis Gossett, Jr. in his Academy Awarding winning role for Best Supporting Actor.  One of their best and most moving scenes is when Sgt. Foley is trying to get Zack to quit but Zack won't give up and finally tells Foley that he has nowhere else to go and he has nothing else in his life.

Zack meets a factory worker named Paula played by Debra Winger at a dance hosted by the Navy.  She becomes very important to him and his life changes as a result of knowing her.  Their love scenes and onscreen chemistry is beautiful and they are a great couple in spite of the fact that Debra and Richard reportedly didn't get along very well. 

I still get choked up every time I see Zack come into the factory where Paula works and sweeps her off her feet in the end.  It is a shame that Richard Gere didn't at least get an Oscar nomination because I think it's his best work.  David Keith also gives a memorable performance as Zack's best friend Sid.  David Caruso has a small part as well.  There is much more to the story but I don't want to give anything away.  Do yourself a favor and watch this movie if you haven't seen it yet!  I own the DVD and it has an insightful director's commentary by Taylor Hackford plus other special features.

Here is a video with scenes from the movie and the beautiful theme song by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes called "Up Where We Belong".



The movie was filmed on location at Fort Worden and Port Townsend, WA.  We have been there twice and the second time we stayed at The Tides Inn where the characters stayed.  The room used for the film has a plaque outside stating that this was the room used for the love scenes.  We didn't stay there but we got the key so we could look inside.  It looked much smaller than in the movie.  We also went to Fort Worden.