Hollywood: Your Place or Mine?

The annual dinner of the Writers' Guild of America is one of those har-de-har-har festivals like Washington's Gridiron Club and Manhattan's Circus Saints & Sinners meetings. This year the tone was set early when John Huston arose to accept an award for advancing "the literature of the motion picture through the years." He waved a bottle of champagne at the cheering masses, declaring that he was drinking to them all "from an overflowing cup, with an overflowing heart." Champagne foamed out of his glass and down over his dinner jacket like a cataract of Fab.

The scripted skits began with...