When it was released in November 2008, the movie echoed current events, which could explain why it was very popular, according to Julia Erhart's article "The Naked Community Organizer. Politics and Reflexivity in Gus Van Sant's Milk", a/b: Auto/Biography studies (2011). Because of its non-mainstream themes and issues, people thought that Harvey Milk would be limited to a restricted audience. But because of how positively most critics responded to the movie’s release, Harvey Milk has drawn a larger audience than expected. Milk benefited from a huge publicity thanks to journalists’ and critics’ praises. In doing so, critics made Milk accessible for large audiences. Critics and journalists particularly liked how the movie’s release echoed current events.

Proposition 8 in 2008

First the movie’s release came a few days before the voting of Proposition 8, a California ballot proposition and a state constitutional amendment passed in the November 2008 California state elections, and which banned same-sex marriage (Proposition 8 was finally deemed as unconstitutional by a federal court in 2010, although the court decision did not go into effect until June 26, 2013). Some journalists attributed Harvey Milk’s critical and box office popularity to the dislike of Proposition 8.

Barack Obama’s election in 2008

Second, the movie’s release came about three weeks after the 2008 U.S. federal election. The press and many other people found similarities between Harvey Milk and Barack Obama. The film was seen as the epitome of B. Obama’s presidency. Reviewers often mentioned Milk’s and Obama’s identities as “outsiders” representing a community. Both are the first members of a community to rise to a certain office. Both Milk and Obama used the recurring theme of hope in their political discourses. Both embody hope and outsiders’ successes, as Milk declared in his “Hope Speech”: “Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, (…). Without hope, not only gays, but the blacks, the seniors, the handicapped, the us'es, the us'es will give up. And if you help elect to the central committee and other offices, more gay people, that gives a green light to all who feel disenfranchised, a green light to move forward. It means hope to a nation that has given up, because if a gay person makes it, the doors are open to everyone”.