Rhodes The Movie-Maker

Sometimes surprising and breathtaking happenings occur in the desert. For example—heavy spring rains bring back to life a dry windblown-riverbed producing a mass of water powerful enough to snatch and carry away everything in its path.

Less dramatic, but no less spectacular—lighter spring rains turn broad expanses of Mojave Desert flatlands into multicolored and picture-perfect wildflower carpets. And even the human hand—admittedly, via time-controlled irrigation boom operations, perform magical dust-to-beauty happenings. Indeed, with the flip of a well-switch, swatches of desert are brought alive with what seems like a flood of purple-to-blue flowering alfalfa.

But most amazingly—if you look widely, without preconception, in the right place, and at the appropriate point in time, you will find people who were swept up in the flood of human events, and did the most unexpected and exceptional things.

One such flood of human events plays out in The Movie-Maker. This tale is not a murder mystery; though there are in fact several murders—but there is little-to-no mystery surrounding who the perpetrators are. Neither is this tale meant to be a literary treatise addressing age-old philosophical questions or current day conundrums. This tale’s primary goal is fun and escapism. Nor is The Movie-Maker a police procedural; though happenings do occur that require police activities. Nor is this tale an action drama even though dramatic actions do unfold. A romance? Not exactly, though several love stories—past and present—flavor happenings and decisions.

Rhodes - The Movie-Maker is simply one of many human event stories playing themselves out in the Mojave Desert along historic Route 66.