_root problem?

Im using the flash db guestbook that works great if loaded by itself, but if I load it into another MC it doesnt work…

You can see it working here…
http://www.iamaugust.com/guestbook/guest.html

Here it is loaded into another MC:
http://www.iamaugust.com/index2.html —>guestbook

Im calling the movie clip like this…
The Guestbook button is calling an empty movie clip on the root with this:
on (release) {
_ _ tellTarget ("_root.guestbook") {
_ _ _ _ gotoAndPlay(“start”);
_ _ }
}

The empty MC is then calling the actual swf…
loadMovieNum(“merch.swf”, 1);

I tried to change all the references of _root in the guestbook.swf to _parent but that didnt help either…

Any ideas…does this make sense??