KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 2 — Veteran producer and filmmaker Datuk Yusof Haslam has revealed that he once pledged his young son’s birth certificate to an ‘along’ — an unlicensed moneylender — to raise capital for his first drama project, a gamble he says marked the real beginning of his career in television and film.
Speaking on the Buat Saja Podcast, Yusof, 71, said desperation and belief in himself pushed him to take extraordinary risks in the mid-1980s, the New Straits Times reported today.
After operating Restoran Haslam for just five months, Yusof set up Skop Productions in 1985, coinciding with RTM’s newly launched drama privatisation initiative. The tender — worth RM300,000 — was a rare opportunity, but one he was financially unprepared for.
“I only had RM20,000 in hand. To get a letter of guarantee from the bank, I needed at least RM45,000. I tried to borrow from various sources to meet the capital requirements,” he said.
With options running out, Yusof turned to an along.
“I was willing to gamble everything, including borrowing from the along, to the point of pledging my child’s birth certificate. That is how my involvement in drama production began,” he said, referring to his son, filmmaker Syamsul Yusof.
The risk paid off. Skop’s first drama, the five-episode Remang-Remang Kota Raya, secured the full RM300,000 contract and became the launchpad for the company’s long run of television and film successes.
Yusof said the project was shaped by encouragement from a police officer friend, Datuk Latifi, whom he met after directing the 1982 film Bukit Kepong.
“If it weren’t for that film, I wouldn’t have known police officers, and my police dramas wouldn’t have existed,” he said, adding that Latifi urged him to move away from family dramas, which dominated television at the time.
Beyond ambition, Yusof said his drive was also rooted in his late father’s fear that the entertainment industry offered little security.
Before becoming a producer, Yusof worked as a bus conductor and acted briefly in films, but his father urged him to find steadier work.
“He didn’t want me to end up like the late Tan Sri P. Ramlee,” Yusof said, recalling his father’s final plea before dying of cancer.
To survive, Yusof sold used cars and second-hand clothes while producing television dramas.
After five years and more than 40 TV titles, he made the leap into film with Bayangan Maut in 1991, which grossed RM1 million despite weak confidence in Malay cinema at the time.
“I almost cancelled the film,” he said, crediting his wife for pushing him to take the chance.
The success opened the floodgates. Skop went on to produce box-office hits including Pemburu Bayang and Sembilu, with Sembilu II breaking records in 1995 with RM6 million in ticket sales — earning Yusof the nickname the ‘Six Million Dollar Man’.
