Nested movieclips not working right

I have a pop out menu with a series of movieclip buttons nested inside. If I hard-code the movieclip buttons they work fine, but if I try to target them with AS in the first frame they still behave like buttons, but they don’t execute the gotoAndStop.

Also if I pull the movieclip buttons out of the menu movieclip I can target them with AS and they work just fine. It’s only when they are inside the other MC’s that I can’t control them with AS in the first frame.

I know this is a seriously simple problem that I am just overlooking, but I’ve been at it for two days and can figure out why these infernal buttons work work.

Somebody please, please take a look and tell me what boneheaded script error i’ve made. Here’s the AS I’m trying to use to have the “portfolio” button send the main timeline to the second frame (“test”).

[AS]root.menu***.popup.port_btn.onRelease = function () {
_root.gotoAndStop(“test”);
}

[/AS]

Again, it works fine if I hard code the buttons and put the script directly on the movieclip button, but I don’t want to do that.

All the best,
Will