MC ceases working when loaded as external MC

I’ve created a working modification of the excellent photo gallery in the tutorials section of kirupa.com. trouble is i can’t seem to get it working after i import it into another movie.

instead of loading a functioning movie with buttons visible, paused on the first photo, it loads the first photo in the array into the place holder on my main timeline.

can anyone offer a solution? i’ve tried various _root combos to no avail…

argh!

postscript: i just read about _lockroot which would probably take care of this, however, i want to export in player 6 not 7.