Ah, the boys of summer.

Some of the moguls (who aren't supposed to confer and tell) had more fun than others at this year's Sun Valley conference, where Allen & Company's Herbert Allen brings the New Establishment and their families together to meet, and to stalk the next big deals. One participant called this year's session "lackluster," but past events have been tough acts to follow. Two years ago, Disney C.E.O. Michael Eisner had the onset of his cardiac episode at Sun Valley; last year, he gave everyone else chest pains by initiating Disney's $19 billion purchase of Cap Cities/ABC.

Eisner stayed away this year, and there was no mega-deal—"Bad stock market, a lot of people digesting deals that cost a lot," explains a tycoon. But business got done: Rupert Murdoch's derailed purchase of New World Communications from Ronald O. Perelman got back on track with Barry Diller playing marriage broker. "I told Mr. Perelman to go get Mr. Murdoch and pull him into a corner to revive the deal with him, because the two principals had never spoken," Diller acknowledges. Then he gave Murdoch a few pointers on talking to Perelman, and the two reached an agreement on the back porch of Allen's house. Having taught the others how to express themselves, Diller kept mum, canceling a presentation on his company, Silver King, and saying he wasn't ready to spell out his plans just yet. At the other end of the spectrum, Viacom chief Sumner Redstone couldn't say enough about his troubled company. "If you said to him, 'Gee, the moon is full,' he would say, 'Yeah. We're going to launch MTV on the moon next week,"' noted one mogul.

While the little kids rafted and fished, the big kids played on the dais. Picture a panel discussion with Redstone, DreamWorker Jeffrey Katzenberg, MCA's Frank Biondi, and Disney's Joe Roth. ICM's Jeff Berg asks: Don't those expensive long-term deals with talent pay off handsomely? Katzenberg, apparently thinking the question rather self-serving coming from an agent, whips out a Supersoaker water cannon—stealthily planted earlier—and shoots. Having doused Berg, Katzenberg takes aim at his next victim, the Silver Fox himself, Motion Picture Association of America president Jack Valenti.

At the annual awards dinner, the wealthy unemployed received sandwich boards, squeegees, and windshield cleaner. Tom Pollock, erstwhile MCA vice-chairman, got a board that said, WILL WORK FOR FOOD, and on the back, CAN WALK ON WATER—apparently an allusion to MCA's survival of the Waterworld debacle. (Last year Pollock got a bucket to bail out after the film.) Departed Sony executive Mickey Schulhof's board read, WILL WORK FOR SUSHI. (Schulhof did not attend the event.) Deposed HBO chief Michael Fuchs's board was inscribed, IF YOU DON'T GIVE ME WORK, l'LL PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE, or something to that effect. Fuchs says the inscription was an allusion to rap (and his brief tenure as head of Warner Music) and wasn't meant to suggest that he has a pugnacious streak. Disney president Michael Ovitz got a number of prizes, including a crown so he could be the undisputed king.

Having dried off, Berg was in for more fun. With Ovitz gone from his throne at CAA, the master of ceremonies explained, Berg was now officially "the biggest prick in Hollywood." The prize: a two-foot vibrator. Not famous as a merry prankster, Berg nonetheless took all this in stride. "Fortunately I went through hell week in college," he says. "I was kind of prepared for this."