Show Business: Fire and Ice a Mile High

NBC shoots a movie on top of a mountain

In the script the scene took a few lines and a gallon or two of purple ink. The helicopter slams into the rock "with a grinding scream, the blades crumple back like spaghetti, still twisting in a slow-motion convulsion of shrieking metal. Like a great dying bird, it seems to keel over in a last agony, twisting downward in a wrenching, moaning death. Whoomp!"

But that scene, and particularly that whoomp—in NBC's upcoming made-for-TV movie High Ice—took six weeks and more real-life dash and daring than will likely be visible on the 19-in. screen.

According...