In the 1980s, Pišťanek was a co-founder and drummer in the music group Devínska Nová Vec, named after the Bratislava borough where he was born in 1960.
[2] In 1998, it was adapted into a feature film of the same name by director Vladimir Balco, with music by Jaroslav Filip and a minor role by Pišťanek himself.
In 2007, Juraj Nvota adapted Pišťanek's short story "Muzika" into a film of the same name, which also included an appearance by the author.
[5][6] Pišťanek's 1999 collection of short stories, Sekerou a nožom, was included on the list of compulsory high school reading in Slovakia in September 2015.
In 2016, the Bishops' Conference of Slovakia proposed to ban the book, due to what they termed to be "perverse language insulting human dignity".