Tampa Film Fan

in the spotlight:local filmmaker eric haase

Local filmmaker Eric Haase almost died and lived to tell about it.  “My personal story sometimes still amazes me when I contemplate it.”  While on his way to attend a play one night in February 2004, Haase suffered a rare brain aneurysm that usually severely impairs the 2% of people who even survive.

“I was fortunate in that the emergency brain surgeon I wound up with was one of the best and he removed the damaged area rather than just stopping the bleed. However, aneurysm rates are on the rise, so are any of us safe?”

After months of rehab and recovery, Haase emerged partially blind, heavily in debt and very happy to be alive with his verbal and writing abilities still intact.  Since then, he has written two books, three screenplays and started a new website.

“My film Apocalypse Near (which I just finished writing and am also working to secure the funding for) is the culmination of things I experienced while dead and the way my mind is working now because of that experience. In a way, I prefer the way I am now to the way I was before. I’ve become hyper-sensitive to the glow of life surrounding us.. Nothing is taken for granted anymore…Ironically, I wanted to take my life last year because of the physical pain I live in and the mental pain of seeing humans trash this world in selfishness, nefarious desire and utter greed.

…Then there’s the fact that I was out of my physical body and in my light body, but I was thrown back to this density and I was mad as hell about that.. I mean, why show me heaven and throw me back to Hades? I know this now: I don’t…we don’t get a say in when why and how we leave here. So I’m no longer in danger of killing myself.

My film Apocalypse Near wrote itself in just a few days, beginning at my lowest point. I was ready to pull the blade across my throat when a new door opened and reminded me that I was a filmmaker and that everything I was trying to do on my Conscious Consumers website and with my Viridian REVELution “REFORMance art” website did NOT have to occur in actual reality. I could write a film about it and make it occur, first on movie screens and then in 3-dimensional reality… So that’s where all this came from.”

In addition to his various projects, Haase was one of the cameramen on the local film The Ghosts of Ybor:The End Is Blossoming. “I’m helping a little bit with the final draft of the feature film that will be made from this pilot and will work on the production when it begins.” 

To view a trailer or to learn more about Haase’s film Apocalypse Near, click here.