Tearing hair out, probly been asked, button in MC

Hi all,
I’ve been agonizing over getting this to work for several hours now, hopefully i can get some resolution here. Now apparently flash doesnt like it when you attach actionscript directly to a movieclip inside of a movieclip, im not really sure why, something about being sloppy.
Inside of the initial movie clip (which is a popup box) i have another movie clip (which really is a button) that I want to assign:

on(release){
getURL …;
}

this doesnt work inside of the movie clip, it works fine on the main timeline. So then i found the crap in the help file about not doing what i have above, so i said sure whatever, and made the geturl a function on frame 1 of the main timeline.

email_butt.onRelease = function(){
getURL(“http://www.galefire.com”, “_blank”);
};

so now I have this function, and it ALSO works fine in the main timeline, just like a clickable button like i want. But it still doesnt work INSIDE of the movie clip. Can someone please tell me what I am doing wrong so i can finish this stupid problem and get done with this website?