After eyeballing a Twitter link last night to a Grantland essay about the greatness of Gene Hackman (except for his performance in The Poseidon Adventure), I too wondered if the retired octogenarian had left this mortal coil. That’s because the headline read “The Greatest Living American Actor at 85: Gene Hackman Is Gone But Still in Charge.” There aren’t too many different ways of interpreting the word “gone.” It means “not here,” “elsewhere,” “took a powder” or maybe dead. Gone Girl alludes not just to a disappearance but a permanent state of absence. After thinking it over for ten or twelve seconds I realized Hackman was probably still with us, but others feared the worst. A Hackman spokesperson has told ABC News that Popeye Doyle is alive and well and walking around. Grantland has erased the word “gone” and all is back to normal.