What was the most surrealistic moment of your life?

It’s nonstop surrealism. But I remember something of a reverse
surrealistic experience. In the ’60s, I had reached a point where I felt
television had taken over my mind. I’d walk down the beach in
California, the sun was setting, the seagulls flying overhead, a pretty
girl at my side, and I didn’t know if I was enjoying the experience
because it was really beautiful or because I had been brainwashed into
doing it because of television commercials. I no longer knew what were
my real, unique experiences as opposed to ones that I had been programmed
for. It’s one of the reasons I left America for England.

The great thing about coming to Europe is that there is such a sense of continuity
here. History surrounds you. You are part of a long continuum, which
you are constantly reminded of. Living in California, history begins
the morning you wake up each day. The truly surreal thing about
living in America is that history has been de-invented. There’s no
grounding for anything.

If you were America’s first dictator, would you eliminate television?

I would limit it. I would have less of it, and less channels. I would
decree that half the programs would have to be made with no image, only
the sound. I grew up with radio, and my imagination muscles developed with radio.
I had to make the sets; I had to put faces on the people; I had to design the costumes. I think that my whole visual sense came from radio.

If, as part of your power, you could bestow a behavior or personality trait on
the average American, what would it be?

A sense of irony. What predates the ability to understand irony is a
certain amount of wisdom, knowledge, awareness and intelligence.

You have said that Americans don’t understand symbolism. Why?

Everything is so literal. That’s why the Catholics haven’t done too well
in America — the Protestants marched in and got rid of symbolism. But
when you do that, you cut out abstract thinking. Symbols are about
abstract thinking. Americans aren’t totally devoid of it because they
love cartoons, which are symbolic in a sense.

What do you think of “Seinfeld”?

I don’t watch television much, but I’ve seen a few episodes of “Seinfeld”
and think it’s very funny. I also saw him when I had a tooth problem
in America and had to visit the dentist. There Seinfeld was on all the
walls, with those huge teeth of his, encouraging me to floss. The basis
of all the films I’ve done is a reaction against perfect American
teeth. I grew up with film stars with perfect teeth, and when I got to
England I started making medieval movies where all the actors have
rotted teeth.

Can you explain the British predilection with fart jokes?

When I came to England, I thought [the people were] the height of
civility and politeness. But they are the least polite. They are the
most tribal group of people on the planet. They hate one another and
they’re stuck on this f—ing little island. That’s why they
went out and created an empire. Anyone with any energy had to get out
of this place and kill somebody else. So they’ve invented this veneer
of civilization, but it’s only to keep them from killing each other.
The farts and bodily functions are really what the English are all
about, and the jokes are a way of dissipating it.

If you were reincarnated as a Monty Python character, which would it
be?

I’d be the big animated foot. Why not? It’s the all-powerful entity
that stomps on everything.

During your epic battle with Universal Studios CEO Sid
Sheinberg over the final cut of “Brazil,” you took out a full page ad in
Variety, sardonically asking him when he planned to release your film.
In the end, he was shamed into complying. What did you learn from the
encounter?

If there’s going to be a mistake, I want it to be of my making, not
someone else’s. I have control over my films only because I’m in a
position to have control, but most directors don’t. So many people in
Hollywood see an opportunity and grab it because they are interested in
“careers,” making money and paying the mortgage — not about doing artwork.
If your name is going to go on something, then you’ve got to take
responsibility for it. That’s why I fight for control. If my name is
not going to be on it, screw it.

What’s the best part about having money?

When I left the late shift at the Chevrolet assembly plant in Van Nuys,
Calif., I made a pact with myself that there were two things I
would do: One was that I would have control over whatever I did; the
second was that I would never work just for money. I kept my living
standards so low that I didn’t need it. In Hollywood they get you to
live beyond your means, so people have to keep taking jobs that they are
offered.

At one point in your life, you studied to be a Presbyterian missionary.
Where would you be today if you had taken that path? Any regrets?

No regrets, but I may have gone to darkest Africa. The idea of being a
missionary was a chance to see the world and have an excuse to do so.
I basically got fed up with the church because they couldn’t take a
joke. I was a real little zealot, but was constantly making jokes about
God. I used to say: “What kind of God is this that you believe in that can’t take my little
jokes?” The people in the church were appalled by this. So I walked away.

Monty Python reunited for one night at the Aspen Comedy Festival a few months ago. Do you envision getting back together on a more
permanent basis?

We got together about a year ago to discuss making another film. We’re
still this family of brothers, and yet the idea of working together would
be very difficult, because we’ve all developed different work habits.
To be honest, the idea fills me with fear and trepidation. I’m not sure
what my role is in it. I don’t want to be an animator anymore, and I
don’t want to direct Python. I don’t know what that leaves me doing.

Your colleague Terry Jones compared comedy to poetry.

Isn’t he a pretentious Welsh git! Both are about surprise and helping
people look at the world from a different perspective, so … I have to
agree with the pretentious Welsh git.

The proliferation of chemical and biological weapons has been in the news of
late — are we heading for a “12 Monkeys”-like existence?

I don’t know if we are or not, but we seem to have the need to feel we
are. It seems that we have this doomsday scenario hanging over us.
Maybe we’ve gotten used to it with the bomb. Maybe we miss the bomb.
There’s another side to it: it’s the sense that maybe we’ve gone too far
and screwed nature too badly. Look at the Ebola virus: It had been
sitting there quietly in the jungle, bothering no body but a few
monkeys, and as man ravaged the jungles, this virus leapt out and
suddenly found a new source of food and was ready to ravage us.

If you got ahold of a time machine, where would you want to go?

I always wanted to time travel, but as I’ve gotten older, all I want to
do is sit in this room right now. I’m happy to say that we’re living in
an interesting time. I don’t know if it gets better than this.

Imagine for a moment you had to give up one of your senses — which would it be?

Taste. I’ve always had bad taste.

So much for the quieter, gentler Newt, who until recently had been circumspect, even statesmanlike, about the president’s alleged scandals. In fact, before last week’s outbursts, the speaker had appeared to be going through something of a makeover, described in his latest book, “Lessons Learned the Hard Way.”

During a recent interview in his Capitol Hill office, Gingrich — dressed in gray slacks and a blue and white gingham shirt open at the collar — came across as eloquent, easygoing, quick with a chuckle or an impromptu history lesson.

Still, he seemed to restrain himself more than once. You could almost see his jaw muscles working as he tried to clamp down on his tongue. Nevertheless, after the interview was conducted, he fired off a few verbal grenades as if he were still a defiant backbencher.

During the interview, he said little about the impeachment scenario, but spoke extensively about public opinion, morals, his political goals and religious beliefs, his reputation for meanness and who he would most like to play in a movie.

You draw a distinction in your book between public opinion and public judgment. Do President Clinton’s robust poll numbers in the face of the scandals swirling around him reflect the former or the latter?

[Pollster Daniel] Yankelovich makes the argument that public opinion is what you say when asked by a reporter about a topic you haven’t thought about. And most of the time you are repeating something you heard somebody else say. Public judgment is what you say after you and the people you trust have talked about [a topic] at length. The president’s health plan did very well in public opinion the morning after the speech; it did very badly in public judgment eight months later.

Public judgment tends to be much more complex and more introspective. I think the public has exercised both right now with the president. On one hand, the public has heard a lot of noise for a long time and refused to pay attention. “Oh that’s more of the same.” On the other hand, the president has asserted very forcefully his innocence and so far the public is willing to suspend its judgment, so long as his innocence is not disproved. I wouldn’t want to bet an enormous amount of money on those [poll] numbers.

Do you expect that there will be impeachment hearings?

I do not think about it. I wait for Judge Starr to brief us.

C’mon, you don’t think about it?

No, I rigorously don’t think about it.

Many have argued that the Lewinsky allegations, even if true, should be a private matter between her and the president. When should a politician’s private life remain private?

I think when it does not involve the violation of law and does not involve the gross violation of public trust it should remain private. I think we’ve had 35 years of soap operas and they’ve actually weakened the country. I don’t believe that America was in any way weakened, and I believe it was in many ways strengthened, by the fact that the press allowed Franklin Delano Roosevelt to have a private life. I believe that America fought the Second World War better because the press corps decided that there were zones in which they would not cover, such as private behavior. But I think over the last 35 years there has been a process of degrading the entire quality of public life that has been astonishing.

Has the average American’s attitude toward adultery changed since the 1960s?

No, I don’t think it has changed dramatically. “Peyton Place” was
written when I was in high school. I used to tell my students, if you
can find something that isn’t in the Bible, come tell me. Until then I will assume that you are repeating normal human behavior. No one ever showed up. The Old Testament is replete with every possible human weakness and every possible venality because it turned out that it was written about humans. We are governed as humans, by humans for humans.

Nicholas Mills, author of the “The Triumph of Meanness:
America’s War Against Its Better Self,” was asked once who he thought is the one person most responsible for fostering meanness in American society? He replied: “Newt Gingrich, who made meanness respectable by continually promoting the notion of ‘welfare queens’ to the middle class. Being tough on the
poor suddenly wasn’t acting cruel, but just doing something positive.”

The cultural style of meanness began, if anywhere, with “All in the
Family” — and a kind of viciously self-destructive, interpersonal
behavior that became the national norm. Cultural tone does matter.
We’re into a kind of humor that’s so malicious that one day I called the president and urged him not to go to another event featuring a
comedian, because I was embarrassed for the president, his wife and the country.

Starting with pure personal invective, I would say that the
gentleman quoted must have suffered from amnesia or missed most of the 20 years preceding my becoming speaker of the House to figure that it began when I became speaker. And I suspect that if he went back and read the things said about Dan Quayle, for example, he’d be astonished by how mean they often were. Or for that matter the things said about Ronald Reagan. In fact, what I have suggested consistently is that the word “compassion” means with passion at its root, and that Marvin Olasky is right when he says no bureaucrat by definition can behave officially with compassion although they can as private citizens.

What we have done in reforming welfare has, in fact, improved the lives of 2.2 million people who have left welfare for the private sector. The question that I would ask the man quoted is: Does he truly believe that New York City was better off when it had 1.2 million people on welfare than under Rudy Giuliani, when for the first time since 1967 there’s less than 800,000 people on welfare? Or does he think that the 400,000 additional people going to work, the civility, the cleanliness of the streets and the general demeanor is in fact an improvement?

You write that you could probably spend nearly every day answering the mean and distorted things that you’ve got to hear and read about yourself. What were the meanest and most distorted?

I can’t tell you. I eventually learned Margaret Thatcher’s rule. I
don’t read them anymore. I just block them out. When in doubt I go to the Smithsonian or the American Museum of Natural History or a zoo.

Are you considering retiring in 2002?

Sure. At the pace at which I do this job I can’t sustain it for more
than eight years.

Have you accomplished everything that you want to in the legislative branch?

We’ve got four and a half more years. No one person accomplishes
everything. My goals are a majoritarian Republican party, which is
inclusive and problem solving. A 21st century information age
legislative branch. Then I have four big national goals and two building block goals: a drug free America, dramatically less crime, creating a world standard educational system, dramatic change in retirement. And then, moving us toward an information age government that only costs you 25 percent of your income, not 38 percent. And having science as the central driving provider of knowledge, information and jobs for the 21st Century. If I can get those eight things done, if I can get them up and running in a way that is stable and understandable by 2002, then I’ve done my job.

Are you saying that you have no plans to run for president in 2000?

I am currently only planning to be reelected as speaker of this hall and I currently am assuming that I will run for speaker again in 2000, but I’m not excluding any other option. I’m essentially an idea-oriented political leader and I believe the ideas matter more than the personalities.

But wouldn’t there be more of a chance in the executive branch to generate and execute ideas?

Considering my background, who I am, where I came from, this has been the right job, because I needed at least three years in this job just to learn how to do it. Remember, no Republican had done this job since Nicholas Longworth in the 1920s. There were no role models. There was nobody to sit and talk with.

What lessons did you learn from the Republicans losing the presidential campaign in 1996?

We should have taken much more seriously the Democrats’ September 1995 ad campaign, which was the initial launch of what was to be 120,000 negative ads; and I think we should have been much more aggressive in figuring out early on that they were breaking the law to do that. We kept saying, “They’re going to run out of money,” but they didn’t because they broke the law. When you look back, it was the most illegal presidential campaign in history.

We also did not have an argument in 1996 that we were capable of winning, which would have defined the election on terms we could have won. That was a huge mistake. The central principal is
always the same, and Margaret Thatcher said it better than anybody:
“First you win the argument, then you win the vote.” Every time we
defined an argument and won the argument, we won the election. Every
time we hide from the argument, we lose the election.

But don’t you think the framers of the Constitution would be appalled at how much time politicians devote to raising money, rather than arguing over the issues?

Yes, and I think that the framers would point out that it’s entirely an artifact of $1,000 campaign [contribution] limits which have not been indexed since 1974. Common Cause first created the problem and now complain about the problem they created and want to make it even worse by restricting free speech. We should have indexed the donations to Super Bowl TV commercials. Look at what it costs today for congressional races to buy a 30-second commercial. Now, you tell me which side is more obscene: those who charge that amount of money while editorializing piously against the cost of campaigning or those who raise the money to buy the ads? I think we should be honest about it. The information age is expensive. It ain’t going to get cheaper, because you have to compete with Nike and Coca-Cola to get your message though.

If you could add one article to the Constitution, what would it be?

If I couldn’t change the courts’ mistaken interpretation of the
religious liberties laws, I would be for a constitutional amendment to require the government not to infringe upon your right to practice religion. This was a country in which God was in the public arena, not a country which drove God out of it.

You are a religious man; you go to church –

I’m a person of faith more than I go to church.

You are also a devotee of science who wanted to be a paleontologist as a kid. Do you believe in the theory of evolution?

I think that a God that can raise a carpenter from the dead could also create a universe that’s understandable in rational terms. In fact, if you talk to subatomic physicists, they are saying more and more frequently that some of their findings require them to have faith.

You are also a historian. As a historian, did you ever notice similarities between the Confederate Constitution and the Contract With America, which both espoused states’ rights and lower taxes?

That’s a new one to me (laughs). As a Pennsylvania-born son of a
career soldier, the idea that I sat down late one evening and took out the Confederate Constitution (laughs more) … That’s good. That’s creative.

If you had access to a time machine, which historic event would
you have most liked to have influenced?

If you could see one historical event, you would want to be there when Christ ascended; however you wouldn’t influence the event because God preempted you. If you believe single events can change history, and they probably can, then you would like to be in a truck running over Adolph Hitler in 1920 as he crosses the street. No other single event, except doing the same thing to Stalin and Mao, would have quite the same impact on the history of the human race.

If you could have any job in the world besides speaker, what would it be?

Any job in the world? Probably one of two: chief general collector for the American Museum of Natural History or field observer at the San Diego Zoological Society.

Why?

Childhood emotions. I love the American Museum of Natural History.
There you get Barnam Brown and Roy Chapman Andrews and the great
tradition of collecting. It would be such a thrill to stand in their
shadows and go out occasionally and collect. San Diego is probably the greatest zoo in the world. Every time I go to their wild animal park I am overwhelmed, and I think going on field expeditions with them would be just remarkable. If I retire in 2002, Marianne [Gingrich's wife] and I have talked about spending half the year collecting and half the year writing and teaching.

If you could cast yourself in any movie role, what would it be, and who would play opposite you?

(Long pause) The psychiatrist played by Robin Williams in “Good Will Hunting.” If you could play opposite one actress, you would want to play opposite Katharine Hepburn, just for the experience of having been onstage with one of the greatest actresses in American history.

If an extraterrestrial landed in Washington, D.C. — let’s say it was
attracted by Al Gore’s 24-hour earth channel — what message would you want it to beam back?

If you saw “Men In Black,” you know that I am conflicted in answering this question. The message I’ve sent back so far is, “Still studying, be patient.” On bad days I’ve sent back, “Less hope, be more patient.” On no day have I sent a message that said, “Good times to come.” All I’ll say is that I have no memories earlier than being in New Mexico in 1948. But I don’t want you to interpret from that — and I will reject out of hand, and we have no controlling legal authority that suggests — that you can define me as an alien for that answer.

Days later, Waters’ agent in Hollywood received a scathing letter intended for the director. “In response to your sarcasms about chickens,” the missive began, “you are wrong. Chickens are intelligent, sensitive, and social birds … It’s interesting that you eat creatures whom you despise. In calling chickens ‘frighteningly stupid,’ you are projecting an image of yourself onto them.”

The letter came from Karen Davis, president of United Poultry Concerns Inc. Davis — something of a Simon Wiesenthal for fowl — says she founded the not-for-profit organization seven years ago in part to memorialize her “companion” broiler hen, Viva, whom she had rescued from a chicken coop five years earlier. United Poultry Concerns’ main mission, explains Davis, is to “combat the negative stereotype of poultry as dumb, dirty and low on the evolutionary scale.”

Thanks to her vigilance, public criticism of the much maligned birds rarely goes unanswered these days. When Oprah Winfrey told viewers about how she switched from eating pork to turkey after seeing “Babe,” Davis fired off a letter recommending vegetarianism to the perpetually dieting talk-show host. When a farmer moaned to Dear Abby that neighbors were complaining about his rooster’s constant crowing, Davis offered her support. “In his own fascinating world of chickendom,” she wrote, “the rooster is a lover, a father, a brother, a food-finder, a guardian and a sentinel. He is nothing to scoff at.”

But Davis’ activism transcends mere letter writing. Aside from building a skylit sanctuary for injured chickens (don’t call it a coop in her presence) onto her Seneca, Md., home, UPC’s president has testified before Congress in a bid to extend “humane slaughter” legislation to poultry, promoted the concept of an “eggless” Easter, lobbied for schools to end classroom hatching experiments and been arrested for disrupting a Pennsylvania pigeon shoot and for trespassing at a county fair in Virginia that featured ostrich races.

Lately, Davis and her flock of 6,800 poultry protectors are throwing their weight behind a grass-roots campaign to halt forced molting, the systematic starvation of hens to control laying cycles. “To manipulate the supply of eggs on the market, hens are deprived of all food for an average of 10 days,” charged Davis. “It puts the birds into physiological shock, so they lose their feathers and stop laying eggs. It’s an extremely cruel practice. You can’t starve your dog or cat and get away with it.”

Davis is heartened by the recent attention focused on campylobactor, a bacteria that infects between 70 and 90 percent of chickens and annually causes millions of Americans to suffer from cramps, abdominal pain, bloody diarrhea and fever. But she still worries that her feathered friends face a bleak future. “Their fate is worse than extinction,” Davis laments. “As the world population grows, poultry will be produced in greater and greater numbers and be subjected to continued misery and degradation … We have a bad attitude towards chickens as symbolized by depraved comments like Waters’. He disgraces our species.”

Waters, however, remains unrepentant. “I’d be willing to bet that [Davis] has a rotten sense of humor and no (human) friends,” he said with a chuckle during a telephone interview. “Her letter was astounding. I thought I had written it to myself as a parody. I’m just glad this woman doesn’t have my home address, because she’s the kind of person who will one day don a chicken outfit and be at my door with a chain saw.”

You’ve long been at loggerheads with the Forest Service, especially over the Wilderness Protection Act, and some have suggested you staged your disappearance as a protest.

That’s a far cry from the truth. Would a person really try to kill himself to make such a point? Believe it or not, I’m really a smart person. I’m very successful. I have a high IQ. I have never been hit in the head. Would a sane person go up there and do such a suicidal thing? If I wanted to commit suicide, wouldn’t I use a gun or take poison or jump out of an airplane without a parachute? Why would I want to go through two days of hell? I just got lost, which is easy to do in a flash blizzard. I damn near died up there.

How did you feel when you received a ticket?

Last January, I went to the Forest Service, thinking that they were going to help me find my snowmobile. So I go to their office, and two Forest Service officers — a man and a woman — introduce themselves. We spent a pleasant afternoon looking at three-dimensional maps to determine where I had been. After agreeing on a likely spot, the female agent reaches under the table and pulls out a pre-written ticket. I told them that I wouldn’t sign it. I said, “If you want to take me to jail, well then, let’s go.” The male agent looks me straight in the eye and says: “Bobby, the Sierra Club got a hold of Washington, D.C., and ordered us to give you a ticket if we found your snowmobile in the wilderness. I said, “What the hell are you guys trying to do to me. I walked for 18 hours straight out there.” And the agent tells me, “Well, if you weren’t a celebrity this wouldn’t be happening.” Now, this is no way to treat a taxpayer.

You and rock musician Ted Nugent recently testified before a congressional panel investigating the implementation of the 1964 Wilderness Act. Should the act be repealed?

I’m not trying to do away with federal wilderness lands. I’m just trying to bring attention to the strong-arm tactics that federal agencies use when left unchecked. You can’t let an agency like this run amok. The Forest Service police act like KGB agents. They’re also wasting huge amounts of taxpayer dollars. Rumor has it that they’ve spent over $100,000 chartering helicopters to find my snowmobile in support of their case.

Do you think you’ll ever get your snowmobile back?

They’ve told me to take it out by horse or foot. We’re going to file a lawsuit to make them either pay for a new snowmobile or allow me to go in there with another snowmobile and get it. They’re in for a big fight. These people better go to a couple of races and learn what a race driver is all about.