Don McLean, the caustic and ever-present head of The Partners’ Film Company, will step down in 2004, following a career that has spanned five decades and literally evolved with the commercial production industry in Canada.

In April, the 69-year-old production veteran was on the verge of selling the Toronto company he helped found in 1978 before the deal was pulled off the table by Toronto-based Avion Films.

‘It was a bit of an exit strategy,’ says the Partners’ president of the aborted sale.

‘People my age shouldn’t be around this business. I think if I stay around, I’m probably going to kill some snot-nosed 25-year-old creative guy. It’s just tougher and tougher to relate to the business the way it is now.’

According to Michael Schwartz, Avion owner and executive producer, negotiations fell through when Partners’ could not deliver Industry Films or untitled, both of Toronto.

‘The rest just didn’t make sense on its own. I thought that there was an inherent value in the company, but it needed some major changes to bring that out. But in the end it just didn’t work for us,’ says Schwartz, a former partner in Partners’.

‘It just didn’t make sense for us without those other pieces in the pie.’

Since McLean is only a part owner in untitled and Industry, he needed consent from the co-owners to allow for the deal to move forward.

Partners’, which is estimated to have a hand in half the nation’s commercial production by shooting days, owns, controls or has an investment in virtually every corner of the business, including production, post-production plus its own equipment company.

Amid rumors of pending sales and new deals throughout Partners’ various divisions, McLean confirms that the company’s equipment arm Allied Equipment is also on the block. He estimates AE’s value at somewhere between $5 million and $6 million.

McLean’s son, Ross, runs the operation.

The company is currently negotiating with several suitors, McLean says, including William F White.

As part of the negotiation, McLean is looking for a guarantee that the AE staff is protected.

In exchange, he is guaranteeing that the new owner will pick up all of Partners’ companies as clients.

McLean also confirms that a new venture is pending involving several post-production companies that operate at arm’s length from Partners’.

He says a new transfer facility is in the offing that will be launched by a numbered company co-owned by David Baxter, Andy Ames and Michelle Czukar, partners at Panic & Bob; Dave Giles and Bruce Copeland, partners at Axyz; David Hicks, a partner at School; and McLean himself.

But the timing of the venture remains in question.

Axyz partner John Stollar, said to be leading the venture, denies the existence of a new transfer shop all together.

‘We’re a long way from doing anything like that,’ Stollar says. ‘It’s expensive and you have to get the right people. So there’s a lot that has to fall into place. If we ever do it, it’s a long ways away.’

Part of the latest spate of rumors involving Partners’ points to McLean using the money from the sale of AE to help finance the launch the new transfer operation. But McLean denies this, saying the sale is simply to take advantage of hard-asset value in that side of the business.

‘It has value now. In a business where most of your assets are people, you can sell something that has hard-asset value,’ he says.

‘For me it was simply a good opportunity to put a sizable amount of money, hard cash, into a trust fund that I have set up for my family, for my grandchildren.

With a deal to sell the production business no longer in the stars, McLean is making moves to reinvigorate the company through the injection of some new blood.

He has promoted producer Gigi Realini and operations manager Angie Cassiram to executive producers with an eye on giving Partners’ a younger profile.

‘I’ve got to give the place a little bit of a new face and I need people who are going to go out and chase the creative people and chase the producers, which we are not as strong on,’ he says.

‘It’s just a chance to give the place a little zip.’

-www.partnersfilm.com