Series 12 - His Greatest Trick

"American Film" is a magazine published by The American Film Institute from 1975-1992. 10 issues were published yearly, with 166 issues in total. Originally subtitled "The Journal of the Film and Television Arts" the highbrow magazine initially focused on film classics but the focus soon shifted to contemporary movies. Countless people associated with the film industry contributed articles and columns, including Francois Truffaut, Ernest Lehman, Leonard Maltin, Roger Ebert, Roger Greenspun, Larry McMurty, and others. In addition to the information about movies and television, the journal offers an insightful view on the home video industry, chronicling the introductions of VHS, Beta, Videodisc and laserdisc and continuing through the VHS boom in the early '90s when the magazine folded. In October 1979, they introduced "The Video Scene," a multi-column section centered on home video, punctuated with ads and printed on a different paper stock. Ads for videotapes began to surface quickly during the run of the magazine and then exploded, with the first major ad being for The Video Club of America's release of "The Sound of Music" in the May 1979 issue. AFI struggled in the publishing market so the magazine went through a vast array of changes over the years. Early issues were black-and-white, ad-free, with a 16-page card-stock centerfold for their "Dialogue on Film" column, which featured transcripts of Q&A discussions with film legends. Beginning with the April 1978 i...