“Girls” creator, Lena Dunham, produced a documentary on Hilary Knight, the man who illustrated her favorite childhood book series: Eloise. The documentary, “It’s me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise” screened at Sundance and is scheduled to premier on HBO on March 23 at 9:00 pm. The 36-minute film profiles the life of the 88-year-old New Yorker.
The children’s story of the little girl living in the Plaza Hotel has inspired Dunham her whole life. Now Knight has inspired her all over again to create this short about his life. The friendship between the two was sparked through Dunham’s lower back tattoo, a drawing of Eloise herself. She got the tattoo done when she was 17 years old at a New Mexico strip mall.
“I think so many young women were obsessed with Eloise’s unruly magic. She’s just such a remarkably independent, vanity-free, complex little girl, and as a little girl you don’t see that many representations of yourself beyond a good little child with pigtails. So it was meaningful,” said Dunham.
Dunham’s tattoo is what caused Knight to contact her in the first place. He sent a letter and some signed books to the Eloise fanatic. After their unexpected friendship took off, Dunham came to the realization that Knight had a unique story that needed to be told. A trailer for the documentary has been released already.
“That was my first tattoo because it felt like the only thing that I knew I would never get sick of. My childhood affinity for her never wavered and I felt so connected to the character, and tattoos are about self-expression and self-knowledge, and that seemed like the perfect entrée into this,” Dunham stated.