Control a movie clip with buttons outside of the symbol

I am trying to figure out a way to have a movie clip be controlled by buttons outside of the movie clip symbol.

That is, picture two buttons (Button A and Button B) and a movie clip (labeled Content) on the main timeline. The movie clip is comprised of 2 frames labeled A and B, respectively.

When you click on Button A I want the movie clip to go to frame A, and when you click on Button B I want the movie clip to go to frame B without going to a new frame on the main timeline.

Currently Button A is coded:

on (release) {
gotoAndStop("A");
}

Is there any way to code the actionscript to go within the movieclip and gotoandStop at frame A.

I know that with this example I could just skip the movie clip and instead just show a graphic on frame 1 of the main timeline and show a different graphic on frame 2 of the main timeline and the buttons would work if I changed A and B to 1 and 2. But this is a vastly simplified version of the problem that I am having and if I can make this work then I can apply the same technique to the more complex issue.

If anyone has any ideas I would appreciate them.