Small talk is the hallway. You don’t get to the good rooms without walking it.

The shallow part of a conversation is the mechanism that establishes enough safety for the real part to happen. Nobody opens with what they are afraid of, and the weather is how two people check that the other is willing to spend anything. Skipping it does not get you to depth faster, it leaves you standing outside.

Treat the first few minutes as work you are doing rather than time you are enduring. Ask one slightly better question than expected and see whether the door opens. Most closeness begins in an exchange that sounded like nothing at the time.