A chance to put ‘Georgia’ on mind of public again

On paper, “Georgia Rule” probably looked like a great idea -- teaming Oscar-winning Jane Fonda with Emmy Award-winning Felicity Huffman and a pre-rehab Lindsay Lohan in a comedy-drama about three generations of women from one family. Added to the mix was director Garry Marshall, whose hits include “Pretty Woman” and the “Princess Diaries” comedies.

But trouble began soon into production and surfaced after Morgan Creek Productions Chief Executive James Robinson wrote a letter that was made public in which he scolded Lohan for being late and absent from the set.

The film itself was pretty much kept under wraps, not being screened for the press until a few days before opening, and for good reason. Reviews were negative and the box office equally disastrous. Still, there’s always the chance to catch it on DVD, starting Tuesday.

Things got only worse for Lohan, who is now in her third rehab facility of the year.

And to add to her bad luck, the reaction to her most recent film, “I Know Who Killed Me,” was so toxic it quickly vanished from theaters.

--

The real meaning of gross salary

One would hate to see Mike Rowe’s fluff and fold laundry bill, let alone his budget for soap, bandages, sunscreen, bug repellent and antibiotic creams.

Besides being the “voice” of the Discovery Channel and “Ghost Hunters” on Sci-Fi, Rowe is the host of Discovery’s popular “Dirty Jobs” series. The first season of the lighthearted show debuts Tuesday on DVD.

Each week, the wise-cracking Rowe tries his luck at some of the grungiest jobs in America -- jobs, as he says, that keep the world running for the rest of the U.S.

In this set, Rowe works as a bat cave scavenger -- a polite way of saying he collects guano that’s turned into fertilizer -- a worm dung farmer, a road kill cleaner, a sewer inspector, a pig farmer and a chick sexer.

--

It’s all coming back now, man

Probably if you saw Cheech and Chong’s first film, “Up in Smoke,” 29 years ago, you don’t remember seeing the drug comedy. If it was all just a purple haze back in 1978, a new special edition of the hippy-dippy farce is coming to DVD on Tuesday.

Directed by Lou Adler, “Up in Smoke” was the first feature comedy starring then-popular stand-ups Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong, whose pothead humor made them a primo attraction on the college campus circuit. And trivia buffs, please note -- the car Chong drives at the outset of the movie was really Jack Nicholson’s. The low-budget farce made $41.6 million at the box office, making it the 12th-highest-grossing film of the year.

--

susan.king@latimes.com