Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone (New York, 1946) could not imagine that in the Retiro neighborhood, in the heart of Madrid, very far from Vietnam, a lookalike was going to come out practically nailed to him. And he couldn’t imagine it because, as we know, that never happened.
What happened was that Santiago Urrialde (Madrid, 1965) saw the 1982 film Cornered one day, and, since he was looking for comic numbers for his show just then, he began to imitate Stallone in front of a mirror. He twisted his mouth. He made a constipated face. He mumbled a few lines against Charlie. He started laughing to himself.
Yes, that joke would be worth as a “joker character” for the minute and a half that his buddy in the Ceda El Paso duo needed to change his clothes, in this case “dressing up as Bibí Andersen, well, today she would be called Bibiana Fernández”.
So, in the drinking dens where the duo performed, basically cocktail bars in the center of Madrid, the character began to appear: an accelerated and aching Rambo who was already beginning to not feel his lower extremities.
“But come on, it was another character, eh? Without much hype, hehehe,” says Urialde today, with a contagious laugh and the same crazy face as 28 years ago, in a friend’s restaurant in Majadahonda, where he lives.
And so life went. Urrialde had just left his studies in Psychology and Sociology to become a comedian, “they were hiring us in some bars and in others, they called each other”, and the money began to come in. So much, “that we even decided not to perform on Sundays, to rest, as if we were professionals, hahahaha”.
“And that’s when they called the casting for a TV show. It was directed and presented by Pepe Navarro, it was in the morning on La 1, to replace [Jesús] Hermida’s. It was going to be called El Día Ahead and it turned out to be great, with many comedians, very good people.”
Urrialde took the test on a Friday, “and that same day at night, without having any idea if they caught us, you won’t believe it, I ran into Pepe Navarro on the street. He told me: ‘Hey, we’re starting tomorrow!'” So the next day he goes from the drinking joints to TV.
Urialde begins to make gags and suddenly coincides with another buddy of the night and of life: Javier Bardem. They have read it well. Urrialde is sitting right now for Papel in a bar in Majadahonda and Bardem is surely hiding from the ‘paparazzi’ on some island he owns in the South Pacific, but that astral conjunction occurred, and not only occurred.
Javier would sit at the bar and we would improvise. He was the colonel and I was Rambo, and he came up with the thing about the legs…
“Of course, Javier! I already knew Javier from the neighborhood, from Retiro. He lived on O’Donnell street, I in Lope de Rueda, and we had met there putting drinks in a joint called El Ratón Vaquero. And I just went to meet him later on the Pepe Navarro program. “
The couple is entrusted with a gag to make way for Santa Bárbara, an old-fashioned series, “a soap opera with 10,000 episodes” -raise your hand for the Spaniard over 40 who doesn’t remember it-. And then collective creation arises. Urialde came with his piece of Stallone and Bardem came up with the phrase of yore: “I don’t feel my legs.”
The truth is that we were discouraged. Over drinks we made a lot of jokes, Javier would sit at the bar and we would improvise. He was the colonel and I was Rambo, and he came up with the thing about the legs…”.
But that was not where it took off. “Then Pepe went to Antena 3, with a program called Estamos Todos Locos, which only lasted a week, and then he went to Telecinco. And we all went there. To Mississippi.” Tonight We Cross the Mississippi, Navarro’s mythical despiporre program, on the air only between 1995 and 1996, but with an indelible cathode imprint.
“And that’s where the character took off. He didn’t do it in the morning, he didn’t do it in our shows in the bars. Who knows why, it was the same at night. The fact is that it started there.”
Urialde played two characters in the Mississippi. One was The Total Reporter: he would go down the street, ask somewhat ill-tempered questions to the crowd and the master touch: after the question, he hit the interviewee’s mouth with a microphone, usually an older lady model geranium.
“Do you know what happened to me later? That people, in the bars, came to interview me and herded me with the drink in my mouth. Several times they broke my lip doing that! I remember an aunt who, when I reprimanded her, said to me: ‘What are you complaining about, if it’s the same thing you do!'”
It is when Rambo emerges. “The same night we started, it was a boom. I don’t know how!” With a smudged ‘face’, a red bandana over a black toupee, and with the face of not having gone to the bathroom in weeks, Urialde appeared on the scene and the ratings -in a program in which everything was evaluated based on the audience- shot up. “Pepe, Pepe… I don’t feel my legs. I don’t feel them, Pepe…”. Javier Bardem was already in Mexico filming Perdita Durango with Álex de la Iglesia, and Urrialde, with his phrase, was the human meme of the moment on pre-internet TV.
It was an incredible hit, everyone remembers that twenty-something years later
Here we make use of privileged information and pass the microphone on to Pepe Navarro, in conversation with Papel: “It was an incredible hit, everyone remembers that twenty-something years later. It generated a gallery of characters. Carlos Iglesias, who later did Un franco, 14 pesetas, was Rambito, his son.” And Nuria González played La Ramba, Rambo’s wife. Navarro laughs heartily: “They had a hell of a capacity for improvisation. La Ramba would come out and shout: Where are you, cuccurrucu?, and Urrialde would freak out… It was very cool, that’s why it worked”.
Navarro highlights “the most incredible thing: although it has remained in everyone’s memory, Santiago was only doing the character for a month and a half, nothing more than that time. He came, asked me for more money to continue, I couldn’t give it to him and he left. I told him: ‘But, man, you’re succeeding, it’s your moment’. But nothing.”
Urrialde has another version: “If my contract with Telecinco ran out at that moment, I had to renegotiate, and my representative simply did not reach an agreement with them, that was it. Also, I had a lot of galas hired throughout Spain, I was on tour for about two years…”.
And then? “When I returned to television, Pepe was no longer there, the program had been taken away from him. Television also began to change: the heart arrived.” Urrialde went to the theater and there he continues, for a decade with Josema Yuste, half of Tuesday and Thirteen, as godfather – and now on tour with El pooper.
By the way: John Rambo never gets to say “I can’t feel my legs”. At most, when a comrade is injured, he yells at his colonel: “I can’t find his legs, I can’t find them!” But that obviously doesn’t matter.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
