Listen you fucking pedants and movie snobs, I said "farther" because I referred to taking steps. These steps were metaphorical, rather than physical, so further could have also been correct, but both are acceptable uses. That "rule" didn't even become a rule until the 1980's and before that the terms were used almost interchangeably.
The purpose of that scene in Finding Forrester is to illustrate that the teacher is a pedant who had clearly misunderestimated the titular character, and I don't think Van Sant was being overly prescriptive about how those terms should be used. It's like merlot sales plummeting because of a throwaway line in Sideways. Giamatti's character didn't want to drink merlot because his ex wife drank merlot, not because merlot is low brow or something. But everyone who likes wine saw that movie and took it as a signal that merlot was for pleebs and stopped drinking it. Great, more for me.
I bet you assholes correct people when they say "octopuses" too.