Safdie Bit Players Follow Up Unreleased Uncut Gems Companion Album With Unreleased Odessa A’zion Companion Album

Mitchell Wenig and his brother Stewart briefly appeared as brothers in the Safdie brothers' 2019 smash Uncut Gems. They're not professional actors: Mitchell collects celebrity autographs, and Stewart is a musician whose recordings sometimes include Mitchell. Their experience on the Uncut Gems set inspired them to write and record an album's worth of music that, much to Stewart's chagrin, didn't make it into the movie.

The Wenigs are really funny in Uncut Gems, and Safdie also admittedly likes that Mitchell was friends with Johnny Ramone. So when it was time for Josh Safdie to cast his newest solo endeavor Marty Supreme, he invited Mitchell back for another small role; Stewart isn't in Marty Supreme, but Safdie says he still snuck onto set "every single fucking day" and is "really aggro" about trying to get his music into a Safdie movie. So Stewart, again, decided to make another album, but this time he didn't bring it to Safdie. He presented the CD to his latest muse, Marty star Odessa A'zion.

Safdie explains on a new episode of Stavros Halkias' podcast:

I was at Odessa's house shooting this thing for promo or whatever, a tour of her house. And she's like, "Oh, this is the CD that Stewart made!" I was like, "He didn't give me a CD." And then we played it, and it was like a whole album about Odessa. It was just like about how he loved her character, the muse.

Some soundbites of the Wenig's Uncut Gems album have floated around online, but the A'zion album is still under wraps for now. See Safdie talk about it below.