About the filmmakers

Steve Kelly

Steve Kelly received his BFA in painting from the University of Montana. For nearly 15 years, he has been a valuable member of the St. Louis arts and media community. Steve is a media professional, a documentary producer, artist and educator.

Steve's films and paintings have been shown both locally and nationally. Prior to "Tour de Donut: Gluttons for Punishment," he directed the cinematography for a short documentary film, "Stan Kann — The Happiest Man in the World" (2005). The film screened on St. Louis PBS as well as at several national film festivals, including AFI's prestigious Silver Docs festival in Washington, D.C. Steve also co-produced and directed "This Means Something" (2004), a short film about the meaning of life that was featured at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in 2004 and a number of other national festivals.

Jim Klenn

Jim Klenn has been writing stories ever since he can remember, and a few years back he decided he wanted to write and produce short movies.

Robert Rodriguez’s book “Rebel Without A Crew” inspired him to "get off my ass and put together a 6-person crew and 2-person cast for a 3-minute short that has been in post-production for a couple of years." Then Jim had the good fortune of working with a couple of great teams for the 48 Hour Film Project in St. Louis. He wrote the scripts for “The Seven-Minute Film Project” in 2004 and “Eventide” (which won the Best Screenplay award) in 2005.

In 2004 Jim rode in his first Tour de Donut, and a few months later asked Steve Kelly if he wanted to make a documentary about the event. Fortunately (for Jim and the project), Steve said “yes.” According to Jim, Steve turned out to be the primary creative force behind "Tour de Donut: Gluttons for Punishment," doing a great job as the main cinematographer, and he spent countless hours editing late into the night after working his day job. (While Jim did shoot a bit of footage and acted as assistant editor, most of what he did on TdD:GfP was in a producer’s role.)

Since it was the first documentary Jim had ever worked on, he was naive enough to think they could knock it out in a couple of months. It wound up taking just over a year to complete.

"I’m eternally grateful for the generous cooperation and support we got from people like Tim Ranek, Brian Cummings, Jim Ibur, Kevin Kohler, Roger Kramer, Mike Weiss, Tim Klasinski, T.J. Bross, Amy Foristel, Michael Blanford, Lauren Verseman and everybody else who lent us a hand, appeared on camera, came to our premiere and bought a copy of the DVD.

"I could have never have worked on this movie for so long without the tremendous support from my wife, Julie (who BTW bought me “Rebel Without a Crew”), and we’re looking forward to getting started on the next one (which will NOT be a documentary)," Jim said.

A native of Chicago, Jim has lived in Belleville, Illinois, since 1990. He loves the St. Louis Cardinals (and overusing parentheses) and doesn't care who knows it!