Dead Man Walking (film) Dead Man Walking (film) Dead Man Walking is a 1995 American crime drama film starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, and co-produced and directed by Tim Robbins, who adapted the screenplay from the non-fiction book of the same name. Sister Helen Prejean (Sarandon) establishes a special relationship with Matthew Poncelet (Penn) – based on real-life murderers Elmo Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie – a prisoner on death row in Louisiana, acting as his spiritual adviser after carrying on correspondence with him. Matthew Poncelet has been in prison for six years, awaiting his execution after being sentenced to death for
Dead Man Walking (play) work. The University of Scranton was one of the original Jesuit Universities to perform the play in their 2004-2005 season. Sister Helen Prejean, who had become an internationally known human rights activist as a result of writing "Dead Man Walking", first conceived the idea of a stage version of her work in 1998 after reading a "New Yorker" magazine article that said Arthur Miller's play, "Death of a Salesman", had been performed a million times, and was performed every day somewhere in the world. Sister Helen realized that if "Dead Man Walking" could be made into a play its impact