One movie button controlling another movie

Hi,

I saw on an earlier thread that someone was trying to get a button on one movie clip to talk to another movie clip to play an anamation.

Basically I have two movie clips loaded on different layers… one containing the buttons the other a series of images that show one at a time depending on what button you rollover.

The movieclip with the images has stop commands inbetween each picture and was activated by a:

on(rollover){
_root.clipname.gotoAndPlay(framename);
}

when the two clips were in the same movie.

Question:

Now the clips are separate and in different layers how do I get the button movieclip to communicate with the image movieclip.

I’ve tried the:

on(rollover){
this._parent.movieclipname.gotoAndPlay(framename);

but nothing happens?

I hope somebody understands what I’m on about?

Thanks

Spence