"I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine.  The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness.  Had Filby shown the model and explained the matter in the Time Traveller's words, we should have shown HIM far less scepticism.  For we should have perceived his motives; a pork butcher could understand Filby.  But the Time Traveller had more than a touch of whim among his elements, and we distrusted him.  Things that would have made the frame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his hands.  It is a mistake to do things too easily.  The serious people who took him seriously never felt quite sure of his deportment; they were somehow aware that trusting their reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a nursery with egg-shell china.  So I don't think any of us said very much about time travelling in the interval between that Thursday and the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in most of our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical incredibleness, the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion it suggested.  For my own part, I was particularly preoccupied with the trick of the model.  That I remember discussing with the Medical Man, whom I met on Friday at the Linnaean.  He said he had seen a similar thing at Tubingen, and laid considerable stress on the blowing out of the candle.  But how the trick was done he could not explain."

H.G. Wells
"The Time Machine"
(1898)

   

MUELLER,
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At sixteen he was a designer, wanna-be art director, animator, voiceover pitchman, and principal actor for two seasons, 1974-75, in "Beyond Our Control," the satirical, national award-winning TV Show about TV, produced at the NBC affiliate at Notre Dame University, WNDU-TV.  Thereafter Charles trained in acting and studied English at Indiana University, where he was active in student literature, journalism, theater and radio, while in addition working full-time in local commercial rock radio as a spot and continuity writer and disk jockey.  

After college Charles trained in acting in the various methods (Stanislavski, Strasberg, Meisner) at the now defunct Actor's Center under Kyle Donnelly and Karen Fort, and studied improvisational comedy under Martin DeMaat, Sheldon Patinkin, and the late Del Close and the late Don De Pollo, while working as a "host," throwing out trash and drunks at the "The Second City," where Charles was known by the affectionate sobriquet, "Chainsaw."  He was a laborer, production weldor, WGN newsroom flunky, Congress Hotel bar manager in a blue polyester suit, wrangler at a thoroughbred stable in Barrington, snow-truck driver for the Illinois Department of Transportation, and stage mechanic and carpenter for The Goodman Theater. 

Charles was a news writer for United Press International, associate editor for down beat magazine, wrote fiction about life on the street and news features for the free weekly "Chicago Reader," and for technical publications in the subjects of Chicago theater, aeronautics and architecture history, high-rise period building renovation, the lives of rodeo stars, dressage, fencing, symphony music, toxic waste, and labor relations. Charles appeared as the beneficent King of France and various thugs in "King Lear," and as the evil Duke Frederick and the confused Oliver Martext in "As You Like It," at Chase Park Theater; as Alex in "The Point Man," at Stage Two in Waukegan; as Ross in "Macbeth" at The Prop; and as Orlando in "As You Like It" at The Talisman Theater, in Chicago.  On-camera and in voiceovers he has appeared in industrials for Long John Silver's, McDonald's, Motorola, and Abbott Laboratories, and worked as a day-player and stuntman in the Gene Hackman feature film, "The Package," the TV series "Crime Story," with Dennis Farina, and in the short-lived TV series allegedly about the Chicago news trade, "Jack & Mike." 

Charles has written for the local off-Loop theater, documentary narrations for children's film, direct-response TV commercials and infomercials, and after several years working in film as a production assistant, art department assistant, and camera intern, in 1995 wrote and directed "Stalingrad," a rock-historical, travelogue, video documentary shot in Russia and Colorado Springs. A devotee of Dickens, Conrad, Salinger, Thomas Pynchon and E. B. White, in June of 2005 Charles finally obtained his undergraduate degree from DePaul University, a liberal arts BA, and in September of that year, fortunately, got married to Lisa, his beautiful and graceful wife.  

Charles presently works as an Associate and Assistant to the Executive Officer for a Chicago capital markets firm, in the asset and liability management of a structured finance portfolio, mooning away his days gazing from the 49th floor of an air-conditioned tower downtown toward Theodore Dreiser's and J. T. Farrell's Southside rail yards, north past Lake Michigan's beaches to Algren's and Sandberg's neighborhoods.

Charles is a member in good standing of AFTRA and the Screen Actor's Guild.  Charles was made a 2d Assistant Director in the Director’s Guild of America in 1994.  He is a volunteer at The Old Town School of Folk Music, is PADI CPR-qualified, a guitar-player and acolyte of Gram Parsons, Leo Kottke and Johnny Cash, bicyclist, and tree-hugger.