[MacPerl] Applescript and MacPerl

["John Gilmore-Baldwin" <john@dwx.com>]

I'm having trouble getting MacPerl variables into my applescripts.  I've
never worked with this aspect of MacPerl before, so perhaps I'm just being
dopey.

Here's what I've tried:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

$x = "Text text";

&MacPerl'DoAppleScript(<<'END_SCRIPT');
tell application "MacPerl"
        make new Window
        copy "$x" & "Inserting text the hard way." to character 1 of front Window
end tell
END_SCRIPT

This gives me "$x" instead of "Text text".

variations on this theme (taking the quotes out, etc.) seem to prevent the
script from compiling properly. (I get no error message, but I get no
output either).

Can somebody help me?

I'm using MacPerl 5.1.0r2.