Bruce Jay Friedman, whose early novels, short stories and plays were pioneering examples of modern American black humor, died June 3 at his home in Brooklyn. He was 90.

Mr. Friedman, who also wrote the screenplays for the hit film comedies Stir Crazy and Splash, was an unusual case in American letters: an essentially comic writer whose work skipped back and forth between literature and pop culture.

His first two novels, Stern (1962) and the best-selling A Mother’s Kisses (1964) — tales of New York Jews exploring an America outside the five boroughs — and his first play, the 1967 Off-Broadways hit Scuba Duba, made him widely celebrated. The New York Times Magazine in 1968 declared Mr. Friedman “The Hottest Writer of the Year.” He continued writing through the ‘70s and ‘80s, many of his stories made into films, including The Heartbreak Kid, a provocative story about a young man who ditches his new wife on their honeymoon and takes up with another woman. His 2011 memoir is titled Lucky Bruce.

Talking to a Key West, Florida, audience in 2005, Mr. Friedman said, “People ask me where do stories come from. Well, they come from a lot of places. Very often, it’s your life, and then you extrapolate from a personal experience. You have a fragment of an experience, and you ask yourself, ‘What if?’”